TLDR – don’t buy an extended warranty, for anything. The claim process is a ton of hassle and you get incompetent contractors. The insurance company tries every trick in the book to not pay any money. Instead, put some money aside to cover repairs, then find the best repair companies to fix the problems. And that includes home warranties during a house purchase.
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I’m generally not a warranty person, but I used to make an exception for Costco. I bought the Squaretrade warranty for phones and computers and I got items replaced a few times, no questions asked – Squaretrade was easy to work with back then, but not anymore.
I purchased a refrigerator from Costco in 2018 with a 3 yr Squaretrade warranty. 2 weeks ago the ice maker started dripping water inside the ice box, causing the ice container to get stuck frozen inside; it’s not shutting off when the ice tray is full, and the water overflows. I logged into my Squaretrade account to start a claim – had some trouble, had to reset my password, then eventually I saw that “Squaretrade” is now Allstate Insurance. So I started a claim, then eventually got on the phone. The agent told me I should try a manual defrost first. I didn’t think that was going to help, but I played along. I didn’t actually do a defrost, but I called back after 3 days to say that didn’t work. During the second call things started going south.
For the first 25 mins, frequently getting put on hold, they reconfirmed all my information, like I was starting a claim for the first time. Then the agent said they wanted me to send them a picture of the ice container frozen inside the door! I’m not making this up, they wanted pictures and video “to help diagnose the problem”. I immediately asked for a supervisor, who eventually agreed to schedule a visit from a service company, as “a one time exception”. The whole call lasted one hour. The company they were planning to send was AVA Appliance Repair. I looked them up on Google Maps – https://goo.gl/maps/CSLp4KQGv58jQzcp9
– they are rated 1.7 stars out of 5, on 100 reviews. Mostly 1-star reviews telling stories of guys showing up with no clue, no tools. So right then I decided I wasn’t going through that again. A couple of years ago I made a claim on the home warranty we got with the house purchase. My dishwasher was down for about 3 weeks because the first repair company was awful. They didn’t fix it but the second company was much better and fixed it – and I still had to pay $75.
Then I googled “when did Allstate buy Squaretrade” – it was in 2016, 2 years before I got the fridge. But Costco were still selling it as a Squaretrade product. Turns out Squaretrade had been losing money for 4 years when they got bought.
BUT, Costco is the best!! I just went online/chat and they refunded the cost of the warranty I purchased almost 3 years ago!