First American Home Warranty Reviews

Luckily, I have the cameras inside of the house. So, I called the owner of the plumbing business, and I explained to her the situation. You can even listen to his attitude. I have it recorded in the cameras. At the end of the day, they said, "You know what? Let me call the First American and we're going to cover all the repairs because this is unacceptable."

Sometimes, the contractors take advantage of the home warranty companies and the clients. Another situation is with a pool company that came last year and they were supposed to replace one part of the equipment with a new part. They replaced it with a used part. They just painted it over to make it look like new. So, I reported that to First American. They said, "Well, it's okay. They can replace it with used parts if we approve it." Then I said, "Well, what did you approve?" "Well, we approved a new one." We went through the process of documenting that that contractor did the wrong thing.

Then, you will never have good luck with air conditioner technicians. What the air conditioner business owners say is, "Work through the warranty, but tell them that they need to bring it up to code even if it is not necessary." That is where they charge you 3,000 additional dollars for work that was not needed. Unfortunately, that's the way that air conditioner companies work just trying to make money. Other than that, a technician came this morning. It's a pool equipment that was leaking. He opened it and replaced something inside a multi-port to avoid the leak. It seems to be working okay now. We have to give it 24 hours for the seal to settle and make sure that there's no additional leaks.

At one point, it was almost as if the repair guy insinuated that the money I was spending on the home warranty, I should be putting toward a new central heating and air conditioning service. Because I felt that he was threatening me, I told him, "Go ahead and send me the estimate." At one point, he suggested that, "If you don't make these repairs, I'm gonna let First American know and they'll void out your contract." He made the repair in five minutes, but then he took photos of everything that he thought was wrong with the system and he left and said he would email me everything. I didn't get any emails, but at 7:30 the next morning, I got a call from Anthem letting me know that the part had come in. I didn't even answer the phone. I just let it go on my voicemail.

Anthem called back about 30 minutes later to schedule an appointment for that afternoon, and I said, "Well, is this in relation to the home warranty?" They said yes, and I said, "Am I paying for anything?" They said no and that whoever came out had to get an approval from a manager to get the part. I asked the woman who was on the phone to make the appointment, then I asked, "Who are you sending out?" She said, "It'll be a repair person." It was not a technician or whoever they sent the day before, which I was glad because I was going to tell her not to send him back out. I've never had that before where I felt as an older person, I was being taken advantage of, and I was really concerned about that.

The second guy who came out the next day was there for a couple of hours and he made the repair. He was very good. I was happy with him. Overall, I've been very happy with First American, and I recommend them. In fact, I referred my sister who purchased a home and she got First American. I have another friend who has First American as well.

The young man from the plumbing company that I recently used was phenomenal. He was helpful and informative. So, that was really good. I'm always skeptical about who comes out if we have an AC issue. There was an instance once before when I had a contractor for the AC unit. I didn't care for his demeanor and the way that he handled things. He kept walking in my house with dirty shoes, on which I don't approve of. You don't wear shoes in our home. I asked him if he had contractors do this and he didn't. He also lied, which spoke to his lack of experience. The problem was that it wasn't heating. So, he pushed it into emergency heat, which caused my light bill to triple.

I called my light company and they gave me the date that it went up. I was able to correlate that with the date of him coming out. My thermostat is digital, so it also tells me its history. I looked at it and that day, he had in fact turned it on to emergency heat. I told First American that I didn't want that contractor at my house ever again. But they assigned him again and I called them and said, “I told you all once I don't want that company at my house. That young man does not know what he is doing. And I don't want him touching anything at my home.”

There was also one instance where I needed a second opinion on something being done because I was told it was one thing and then I called another company and found out that they were trying to replace the entire unit at that time. But the person I got the second opinion from told me that it was only gonna require a few minutes of welding and that the tech that was sent out was apparently lazy. So, I called First and said, “Look, we don't have to spend all this money to do this. Let's just get somebody out here that knows what they're doing because I got a second opinion. This is the deal.” Then everything went fine.

Flow Star Plumbing - the same people that I had seen before, misrepresented several things and didn't install the unit according to code locally. We had the unit for about two weeks and we saw water leaking out of the bottom. When we would wash a couple of loads of clothes, there'd be a little stream of water coming from the bottom of the new water heater into the drain nearby. It was my first experience with that kind of thing. I called the plumber that installed it instead of calling First American and he never responded. I went almost two and a half weeks trying to get him to respond. He responded later and said he'd be here the next afternoon but he never showed.

I finally went to First American. I called this this number and I got a person that's like a claims representative. I was not getting the results through that process that I really think they would prefer. They were getting confused that I hadn't had my hot water heater installed and I said it was the brand new one and that was the problem. It took a month. Finally, I got a letter from the president of First American thanking me for having been with them and telling me that it was time for renewal coming up and that they certainly appreciated my being with them. I took advantage of that moment that I sat down and wrote a letter real quick and sent it out to that address. About four days later, I got a call from a higher-level customer service person and everything got taken care of very easily and quickly.

When you have a real issue, it doesn't really pay off to have to go through the lower-level claims people. There should be some kind of a resort over to the claims resolution or something with a little bit more authority immediately. Also, I think about three-fourths of their people at that level are remote. But overall, my experience has been favorable and everything else had been just great.

The site has lots of drop-downs. So, I just pick what I have. We had an issue with our dryer. I assume, on their side, it's automatically sent to whatever company is next in line to get a claim. That company calls and makes an appointment. The people come out, that company works back with First American if they have to submit something that they need approval for. They fix the issue, they close it out, and First American sends me a email saying, "Looks like everything's done. Are you satisfied with what happened?" I even pay my deductible online whenever I submit my claim the first time.

We've only had one issue with the people that they sent out. So, I'm trying not to focus on that. 99% of the time, everything is great. People are super nice and happy to help. In the 1% that it's not been the best, First American decided to replace one of our appliances. It wasn't really repairable. We had an issue with the people that came out to deliver that product. First American said that's between us and that company and left it at that. There's now a disclaimer on their website that they are not liable for any secondary damage. So, we submitted a claim for the washing machine that doesn't work. Anything that happened after that is not their issue. There was damage to our home. They flooded our laundry room. It's been drama and that was in May and it's still unresolved.

Some of the damage that happened was they broke one of the pipes where the washing machine connects. So, we were without a washing machine because that pipe couldn't be turned on. I had to file another claim and pay another deductible for someone to come and have that fixed. They fixed it, but I had to pay my deductible again. I was like, "But it was because of the other thing." They told me, "No, it's something new." And I finally just broke down and said, "Screw it. I want it fixed." So, I paid. I was not happy with it. We had to go to the laundromat for like two months until I finally said, "Fine. I'll pay somebody to fix this." It's been very frustrating. It's 1% of everything, but it's enough to make you irritated.