Count on home warranties for angst and aggravation
by Mary Ellen Collins

I never want to meet the people who write home-war­ranty contracts. Each time we’ve sold a house and our real estate agent has said, “Of course you’ll want to offer a home warranty,” my husband, John, just sighs and shakes his head. It’s not that we’re too stingy to provide protec­tion for a buyer. It’s that we’ve never had a warranty that worked in our favor, and we regret spending money on this sham of residential reassurance.

We received our warranty initiation in Boston, when a leak sprung in our bedroom ceiling shortly after a visit from John’s parents. The warranty-approved plumber quickly diagnosed the problem and traced it right to ... John’s parents. My in-laws were our first guest-room overnighters and, therefore, the first people to lie in the bed located directly above our bedroom. This put weight on the foor, which moved a floor joist just enough so that a nail that was poking through the joist punctured an adjacent water pipe. The verdict? Pre-existing condition. The plumber could fix it, but we’d have to pay.

“But it says right here that the warranty covers leaks!”
“New leaks.”
“This is a new leak!”

Arguing was futile. The nail next to the pipe was like a lurking virus that hadn’t yet begun to wreak bodily harm — an accident waiting to happen. The plumber was as well-versed in defending the legalese as the bureaucrat who wrote it. I never saw loophole-defending elevated to such a high art — that is, until we moved to Florida.

When torrential rains in St. Petersburg revealed a bad leak in our pantry, the warranty-approved leak guy said the problem was in the seam between the roof and wall. And although the contract clearly covered roofs and walls, it didn’t cover seams. I couldn’t fathom anyone coming up with that kind of hair-splitting, let alone delivering the information with a straight face.


And now, we’re the proud owners of a whopping five-year warranty paid for by the woman who sold us our condo. We also have a one-year builder’s warranty — a little extra insurance that the people in charge will actually take responsibility for their own work. We recently put it to the test with the builder’s recom­mended air-conditioning company. After two months here, we still can’t achieve a reasonable level of cool air upstairs without turning the first floor into Antarctica.

The air-conditioning technician adjusted every vent a millimeter or two and checked the outside handler. His verdict? You can’t fix what isn’t broken. The system is working exactly the way it’s supposed to, and the temperature will never achieve perfect balance because our builder chose not to install a dual-zone system.

Of course, we paid nothing for this call — a perfect example of getting exactly what you pay for.

Mary Ellen Collins and her husband, John, live in St. Petersburg, Fla. When she’s not grappling with the ups and downs of owning a home, she reads, does yoga and worries about coming up with column ideas. E-mail her at maryellenc@angieslist.com

For the most up-to-date ratings, call us or check angieslist.com.