We woke up on Sunday morning to hot house. The downstairs Air Conditioning unit went out. Not fun at all. We moved into the house less than a year ago. With that, we have a home warranty that lasts for a year. I looked up the paperwork and we’ve actually got 35 days till the warranty expires! After we got back from church, I called up First American Home Buyers Protection Corporation (the home warranty company), to submit my request. Lets make this our starting point and call Sunday our “Day 1”.
The process states that they will assign a local HVAC company to service my request. I was assigned House Pro Incorporated. The process also gives the company the end of the following business day to contact me. In this scenario, that means they should contact me before the end of Monday (Day 2). Midway through Day 2 (around noon-ish), I decided to be proactive and call House Pro Incorporated myself to inquire about the status. After being on hold for a bit, all they could say is that they are “currently processing the request” and would call me back in 1 hr. After about 3 hrs, I didn’t get a call back, so I called them again. On that call, they were still “processing the request”. Day 2 ends, no call-back occurred, no A/C at the house.
As a side note, our upstairs A/C unit still works fine, so we’re OK, but it’s just a little inconvenient not having the downstairs as livable space.
Day 3 (Tuesday). Around 10am, I call up House Pro Incorporated and got a busy signal. Slightly frustrated, I call the home warranty company to get the issue resolved. After being on hold for roughly 5 minutes, I get real person to talk to (as opposed to the machine I was talking to) and asked them to help resolve the issue. He goes on to put me on hold while he tries to reach out to House Pro Incorporated. So now, I’m on hold with the Home Warranty Company while the Home Warranty Company is on hold with their contractor. This round of “holding” lasted for 30 minutes until the Home Warranty company finally said that he’ll call me back after he reaches his contractor. Ridiculous, right?! After about 2 hours, I get a call back saying that they’ll come between 10am and 2pm on Thursday. THURSDAY! Not Wednesday (Day 4), but Thursday (Day 5).
So Thursday (Day 5… that means 5 days without A/C) comes along. House Pro Incorporated (the HVAC company) is supposed to come between 10am and 2pm, so I took the day off. Exactly at 10am, I get a knock on the door. Amazing, right? In roughly 20 minutes, the following part was swapped out and we were in business.
After 5 days of no A/C, we now have a working Unit! If you’re familiar with a Houston Summer, you know how important that is. I asked the HVAC guy how much this job would have been if I didn’t have the warranty and he said it would have been $300. I only had to pay the $60 deductible. Although I enjoyed the savings, I don’t know if it was worth the slow response time. Now that it’s fixed and I only paid the $60, I’m happy none the less.
Since I realized that my home warranty was about to expire, I started looking around everywhere to take advantage of the final days of my warranty. I had a plumber come out the same day to fix hot water issues we were having. He fixed a few things, but not all. I’m hoping everything will get resolved before my warranty expires!
Overall experience so far… I love the fact that I can just call one number and get things fixed at the house. I also love the fact that I only have to pay $60 per service call to get anything fixed (within the restrictions of the warranty). The downside was the major delay in getting things fixed. A broken A/C in the Houston Summer should be top priority. But that’s just my opinion.
Sajan Abraham 
My ac went out last thurs night. Called Tim and he came Fri and fixed the same thing as yours the capacitor for less than $150. I’m not a big fan of warranties because of the BS. But since you have it better use it.
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Tell me about it! I actually called Tim first and he reminded me of the warranty.
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