Home Warranty (sale, house, buying)

[aggie354]

I'm under contract for a home im buying and the home inspector recommended that I get a home warranty. I was under the impression that the seller would purchase the warranty to cover any incidents that occur for a period of time after I move in and I can renew if I wanted?

Anyone have any experience with this or have a warranty and recommend a company? Is it worth it the money?

[hrjersey]

If you search this forum you may find a thread about this but here is my experience (and obviously this is just my personal experience and my personal opinion).

I was selling my mother's house as part of her estate. Since it was an older home and we were selling As Is, our RE convinced my brothers to purchase one since it would cover the house prior to sale and for 1 year after.

So, prior to sale there was a leak in one of the bathrooms - a small leak due to age. I called the warranty co., and took a day off from work. He shows up to say the leak isn't covered and then wants to charge me a $50 service fee even though he didn't fix anything. My brother the contractor took a 1/2 from work and fixed it.

So, I look at the fine print and find out that pretty much everything is excluded except for repairs that end in "z" that happen on the 29th of February in years that end in 7. Now really, I'm a pretty detailed person and one of my brother's is a contractor. I read the warranty before purchasing and I never would have notice all the little exclusions.

[brook2ga]

I have one. You have to read the contract to see what's covered and what is not. There are usually several levels of coverage. I had some plumbing issues (toilets backing up), called, paid the $60 fee, and was told the work that needed to be done wasn't covered. There's a class action lawsuit against the company, AHS.

[forcedfx]

I agree with hrjersey.

Extended warranties are usually worthless. I worked at a boat dealership that sold extended warranties from a 3rd party and I can't even count how many people I had yelling at me because they thought the repair should be covered by their warranty. One of the clauses was "water intrusion" which is usually the cause of 50% of failures when it comes to a boat. Half the time the customer wasn't even given the pamphlet with the details of the warranty. On average the person who spent $3k on a warranty got about $300 of actual use out of it.

The only person I ever saw get their money's worth out of an EW was my Mother on her 97 Dodge Neon. After my experiences with that car I will never buy a Dodge product.

But I digress. If you are considering one make sure you carefully study the fine print. The warranty company will hold you to it word by word and they will try to twist it around whatever way they can to NOT pay. They're in business to make money not save you money.