American Home Shield Reviews

In our experience in the past with our AC, most contractors come here, and they check the outside unit, the furnace, and the thermostat. They check everything. But when the repairman came out, he was here for 15 minutes, and he said he's been doing this for a long time and he's laughing the whole time. He also said the unit is not built to do good service with these extended heated days. When we got back from the hospital in the afternoon, it was 98 degrees and the thermostat read 78 but it was set on 68. We called him and told him that was unacceptable. We called American Home Shield back and told them about the issue and about my health. They said they'd send them back out out. That was a Thursday but he couldn't come back till the next Tuesday.

He came out on Tuesday, went up in the attic and asked who installed the unit. I told him the unit was installed in 2019 through AHS. He said the unit outside is a two-ton compressor unit, but the compressor in it is 1.5 tons. I reported that to American Home Shield, but they did nothing about it. The guy also said whoever installed the unit left the fan blowing on low instead of high, that he was going to switch it, and that should fix it. He left and that was about 5:30 in the evening. He set the thermostat at 75 and I changed it to 68. That night, it got down to 73 degrees and the cooling wouldn't go past 71, which makes no sense.

When he left, he told us not to call the company back and to call him directly. He gave my husband his number. That was the day before yesterday. My husband called him yesterday, but there was no response. I called American Home Shield because he was non-responsive. They called them, sent them an email, and told them that they wanted a senior technician to come out to see why they can't get this unit fixed.

The young lady, Nicole, called this morning and asked what's going on. I told her about my illness and being released from the hospital. She told me Keith, the guy that came out, is their most senior technician and he couldn't come out till Monday. I told her we're going on three weeks with an AC which is very unfair and not right. She has the same attitude he does. She was laughing and asking how old is the unit. She said she was hoping I could get AHS to send someone else out so they could see what they're missing. In other words, they don't know why they can't get this unit right. I ended up calling AHS back this morning, telling them what happened. I also told them I need somebody out here before Monday. It's gonna be 100 degrees today and 98 tomorrow. They are making it so I can't even sleep in my own house.

On other claims, American Home Shield has been great. They've replaced our dishwasher. We have two HVAC units in our house, one upstairs and one downstairs because of the size of our house. They've replaced both of those. They've replaced our washer and dryer as well. I really haven't had any other issues until now. American Home Shield should vet their contractors better. I think this recent company has one employee and he's running around trying to do everything. He showed up the other day here about 5:45 or so. That's a long day for him. I understand that, being the only employee, you are servicing everybody so you don't have a lot of time to spend on one unit to really figure it out.

75% of the contractors are great, and then there's 20% of them that I would change. But overall, it's fine. I've had some delays that have taken too long, and then there have been two that have been completely unacceptable. American Home Shield's biggest problem is not being able to be flexible after they've assigned a contractor.

I've had two. One guy tried to have me actively defraud American Home Shield. He was going to pretend to fix something, and then have to come back and show that it was a bigger issue, and then give me a whole brand-new air conditioning system, but he was going to defraud American Home Shield out of a new air conditioning system when that wasn't necessary. And they didn't kick him off. And then, the other one was the most recent one and the most recent negative experience.

It was a company that fired its entire front office and replaced it with AI. I had an edge case where a technician came out and tried to order a part, but it wouldn't get delivered, and the AI wasn't able to handle that edge case. I couldn't contact a human being, and American Home Shield couldn't contact a human being. But rather than drop the contractor, they just kept them on the books, and I had to hire somebody out of pocket because it never got fixed. It's been three months, and it's still not fixed.

The other context that I think is important is that I live in a relatively rural area. I live in Harrisonburg, which has 50,000 people, and that's the largest city in a decent amount of space. I lived in Atlanta before, and I didn't have any complaints about American Home Shield, and that was because they had a bigger network to work with. Whereas the contractors that work on a national scale, who would partner with American Home Shield, don't have the same type of coverage in this sparsely populated area. So things take longer out here.

Then, there are mistakes or problems, and those things are compounded. For example, a guy fixed a faucet for me, and it was straightforward, but they didn't have the finish that I wanted on his truck. And it took a week for them to get back to me, not because they weren't diligent, but because the guy only comes to Harrisonburg once a week, because that's what his route dictates, and it's not in their interest to make a new route for me for a one-off $100 faucet. And that totally makes sense. But in Atlanta, that would never happen. They have their pick of the litter for contractors. Sometimes it takes longer for contractors to come because they have to find someone who's willing to come out here.

And I'm okay with that. It's a trade-off. What I tell my clients is, "You have to pay blood, sweat, and tears, but you're getting free stuff." So if that's a good trade for you, then they stand by it, and they do what they say in their contract, which I understand is not necessarily the case for these other such companies.

D & B was supposed to come out as a plumber to take a look at the leak caused by the first company that tried to install the dishwasher. They set a time with me to come out on a Friday, but I had to cancel it on Sunday because I got called into work for a Monday appointment. It was over 24 hours in advance notice to reschedule, but the guy still came and they charged us. I called American Home Shield and they refunded me the money. The company has two owners, D and B. Dennis was the one I originally scheduled with, but B was the one who showed up. He said it would have been better if they had been informed about the reschedule. But they still told American Home Shield that they showed up. I said I gave them a 24-hour notice. I tried to call them myself to reschedule, and there was no answer. I left messages but there was no response to reschedule it.

The rep from American Home Shield couldn't help me and told me that I was gonna have to call back during business hours. They need to contact that company to see if what I was saying was true. I called back, and they said there was nothing that they could do. I got more help through the online texting service than I did over the phone, and the online reps showed more empathy. The people that American Home Shield sends out are a gamble. Some of them are good, but you don't know what you're gonna get when they come out.

The guy from the first company didn't speak any English. So, to tell him what was wrong, we had to type it up and then translate it into his language. Then you had to wait for that company to get the part. They came out but that didn't do anything. They ordered another part, but that still didn't fix it. So, we had another company come out. They were fantastic. They said we need a new dishwasher because repairing the control panel doesn't make sense. But we had to wait and take several days off work. Plus, we have to be home the whole day because these people will give you at least a four-hour time slot. And sometimes, they don't even show up during that time slot.

I had to take off a day off work to get the dishwasher in my house, and when it arrived, there was nobody scheduled to install it. It had to sit in my house because the company won't come out until you have it on your premises. When the installer came, he did not take away the old one. He said if it was still there the following week, he would come back later and get it. But he said the trash company will pick it up. It sat out there for several days and I got a letter from my HOA asking why I had junk sitting in the front yard. The trash man ended up picking it up. I'm glad my dishwasher’s working now. But it was a complete nightmare. Everything was resolved, but it took four phone calls, messaging, and hours of back and forth to get there. It was frustrating all around. The price is decent, but it took me four months to get one issue fixed. So, it was more of a headache than it's worth. Even though it's cheap, you get what you pay for.

I've had 24/7 here before with my air conditioner and they did the same thing. They come out and looked at my air conditioner. It wasn't working at the time. Their guy unplugged something beside the unit and plugged it back in and then wanted to charge me 500 for a new air conditioner. They charged $115 just to look at it. So, I called another air conditioner guy out that was nearby me here and he came out, looked at it, and he pulled that same unit out and he put it back in. We turned it on and it worked. So, there was nothing wrong with it. He also said, "You don't owe nothing. I didn't do anything." That was two years ago, and I've had it worked fine last year and it's worked this year already. I won't have 24/7 back at my house again. I've had them come and tear my furnace apart about 13 years ago. They said, "By law, we can't put it back together. We got to replace it." So, they charged me an exorbitant amount for a new furnace.

I heard another guy tell me the same story. He had somebody that knew about this system come out and look at it and there was nothing wrong with it. It was something just minor that had to be fixed. So, 24/7 was just in here to replace everything without even fixing it. I think this pump here for me this time must have reset itself when I unplugged it and plugged it back in, but their guy never checked it. He even thought that the drain pipe needed to be replaced because he didn't ever look at it. He did shake it a little bit. It was loose, but that's because it sits on the pump itself and that's normal. It is not fastened on anything. It's fastened to the wall, but down at the pump area, there's nothing holding it down there other than the pump itself. So, if Home Shield is contracted with these guys, I would suggest you guys to find someone else to contract with.

I called American Home Shield back and told them the situation and they refunded my money. So, that tells me that they're an upstanding company. I was happy with that. If they didn't refund me that, I would have been disgusted and dropped them. I've been having issues with my water heater. I've been struggling along with it. I figured, at some point in time, I'm going to have an issue with it. So, if that happens, I was going to see how it's handled this way and see how it goes. I'm going to ask them who's coming to see if I have any issues at all, and if it's 24/7, I won't allow them in my house.

He took the panel off the front of it and said there was nothing apparent there. But he didn't drain it or do anything to see if there was any residue or build-up. He knew we're selling the house and one of the things he did that I thought was questionable was he asked if we needed work done on the house other than the water heater. We told him we had an inspection done, and there were some things we needed to do. He gave us a card for a company and told us they'd give us a free estimate. We told him we already have a handyman that we can call. He told us it was a free estimate so we might as well have them come and check what we've seen to see if it's fair. It felt like he had a monetary interest in it.

We had these guys out, and the estimate that came through was mind-boggling. We hired a guy to go under our house, and he spent all day long replacing insulation and fixing a dryer vent from our dryer. There was a vent that had dropped and not connected right. He cleaned that out, and he vacuumed for hours under there to get anything off the crawl space and clean it up. $600 is what we paid him, plus we bought the insulation, and we bought him a hazmat suit so we're probably 800 into it. But this guy wanted $5,700.

We also asked the plumber guy very clearly, before this guy came out and gave us this horrendous kid, “Will you put in writing that you inspected the hot water system and it’s running fine?” He said he would do that but he left the house and never did. He said it would be on American Home Shield's website. I'd be able to pull up the report ‘cause he would give the report to them. But it's not. All American Home Shield did was put on that the service has been completed, but there are no results. I've called American Home Shield and they said they sent me an an email and they'd send it again. But the email, once again, just said the service has been completed.

I want something that I could show a buyer that says we've had the unit looked at and it's running fine. But we don’t have that, and that's more of a frustration with American Home Shield than it is with the plumber. The plumber was what the plumber was. If the guy did a bid to repair something, my guess is that information would probably be available. But if everything's fine, that information should still be available because I'm sure he had to make a report to American Home Shield. The way that the home warranty is supposed to work is that I pay the deductible, they pick the dude, and dude comes out. If something's broken or needs to be replaced, he lets them know, and they cover that.

I'm a real estate broker and I have sold these warranties for years to people. I have bought them for years for my clients. I just got an email this morning saying that one of my clients had their washer/dryer fixed thru American Home Shield. I also had a client who had to replace their whole HVAC system. My client thanked me for buying them the warranty as it saved them money. American Home Shield covers what we wanted covered and the price is very reasonable. I felt that it was very legit because I've seen it work but it was only a great experience until I had my own.

Mind you, the dryer vent had been cleaned out prior to technician getting here. So that just tells me the tech didn’t want to fix the dryer. Called AHS one more time to get the issue fixed and kept getting passed from one representative to another to finally be told that it was not their problem and I would have to pay another fee to get it looked at because it had been over 7 days since technician had been out. There again, it took over a month for the tech to even turn in his report. I’m done. A customer should not have to pay a service fee for a repair that was never properly handled. I will be cancelling all of my properties service contracts.

It's been three weeks with no air now. I don't even have air still. I'm still waiting on them to come out to put the compressor in because they don't have the part in stock. They're telling me the 20th before they even get the part and I don't know how long before they schedule to come out to replace it. Once they get my AC back up and running, I'm gonna wait those 30 days so I can make sure it's working properly and I'm going to see how much it costs to break my contract because I'm going to go with another company.

One of the guys who came out recently was a big guy. I'm 5'11" and I was looking at this guy's chin. He's got me by 80 pounds and I'm 190. And he was laying on the floor. First thing he did was he put these little booties on and I told him that those were not necessary since we were going down into the basement. He apologized because he'd been working and it was late in the day. So he'd been in the heat and the ugly. His T-shirt had some dust on it from laying on floors and he also apologized for that. I told him there was no need because my floor is bare. So, we went down there, he wired in my condensation pump perfectly for me, and took care of the air conditioning. Roughly, he wasn't here 30 minutes before he had the AC up and running.

For this claim, the AC took a flying leap and it was on a Thursday, when I realized it was dead. I called American Home Shield early Friday morning and I got in touch with the vendors on both ends. I wasn't worried about the plumbing issues but the AC was getting ugly because we had that heat wave coming. But they got the guy out here that Monday. So we weren't hurting at all in that respect. To those who are considering getting American Home Shield, I'd encourage them to do it. I've been in the service business and the fire service all my life, and things are so gosh darn expensive now. If you pay for a home warranty through a year and you blow an air conditioner out, you're going to get your money back. Like any insurance, you're gambling. So it's a good gamble.

American Home Shield is there when you need them. They get back to you quickly or you get somebody right away, and it costs a bucket of quarters for the deductible. I had to pay two of that recently because I had a plumbing issue and an electronic issue with the furnace. But if I call a vendor on my own, there are some AC companies that charge what they call travel time, so they charge you from the time they leave their building to the time they get to your home. And that's a hit in the head in that respect. So, if you're going to call a vendor, it's going to cost you a lot more.