HMS Home Owners Warranty

After spending so much time, energy, and money on buying a house, my fiance and I were delighted to get something for free. After all, what could be better than a free home owners warranty through HMS, an established and recommended company? It truly seemed to be a saving grace when our heating and air conditioning stopped working shortly after we moved in to our townhouse. We called HMS, and they put us in touch with a contractor who came out immediately to check our furnace. He determined that we had a bad fuse, which he replaced, we paid our $100 deductable, and we sent him on his way. Two days later when our heater still wasn’t working, the contractor come back out to find further problems that would possibly require replacement of the unit.

That’s where the communication ended. After a week of not hearing from either the contractor or HMS, I called HMS to find that no log of our work order even existed. In the meantime, the tempurature outside had dropped to nearly 30 degrees. I was told by HMS customer service that a message had been left with the contractor to retrieve our work order and that someone would be in touch on the status of the repair within 24 hours. After 48 hours, I called HMS for the fourth time.

During the fourth call, it was determined that no work order had ever been obtained. The HMS customer service representative explained that she was placing a complaint with the warranty service management on my behalf. As compensation for the lack of effective service we had received up until this point, going nearly three weeks without heat or communication from either service provider, she offered to put in a request that our deductable be waived. I actually got off of that call a relatively happy camper…

The next day, my fiance had to make our fifth call to HMS. At that time, he was told that someone from HMS had left a message for him a week prior about the work order and our options as far as having our unit fixed. They were waiting on us to decide how we wanted the repair handled. He explained, not calmly I might add, that I had spoken with someone from HMS just the day before because we had not received any phone calls or messages. Of course, they had no record of my conversation, they fact that the contractor had not provided the work order, or our request to be reimbursed for the deductable.

At this time over a month after our initial contact with HMS, we still have no heat. Supposedly, we are waiting on a part that will fix the unit to be shipped to the contractor. We don’t know when it will arrive or if we will be contacted upon its arrival. My guess is no. Most likely, I’ll be making another call to HMS in the coming days.