Can Choice home warranty take care of your needs?

BY MARC MOSS 

Home warranties are becoming massively popular across the U.S in 2018. The biggest company in the home warranty industry, American Home Shield, reports revenues of more than $100m which indicates they are serving as many as 200,000 household customers (based on the average cost of a home warranty plan which is at around $450), and that’s only one company! If you take everything into account, there could be as many as a million people across the USA who are using a home warranty company.

New York state is no different. Although there are more condominiums than private houses in comparison to other states, there is definitely a good amount of interest among New York property buyers and sellers in home warranties. When you sell a home with is already covered with a warranty, it gives potential buyers the peace of mind that the house is well maintained and taken care of. The real question to be asked is whether home warranties are in fact reducing the risk and future costs relating to house maintenance.

One of the largest home warranty companies which is also accepting NY-based clients is Choice Home Warranty. This data-oriented review of Choice can help you understand the offering presented by the firm. In short:

• You will pay $400-$450 per annum in premiums.
• You will pay $60 with each service call.
• A big portion of your items will be covered under this policy. Once a covered item breaks, you could call the service center, which will dispatch a professional to fix it within 2 business days. If it is unfixable, the item will be replaced.
• Different items have different replacement limits ranging between $500-$1500.

If you add up the annual costs, the answer is the Choice home warranty’s plan can save you money if you are expected to spend at least $600 every year on appliance fixing and replacements. If you have particularly expensive appliances and home systems, this may look like an attractive deal, but beware – each item has its own limits. If your $10,000 top-of-the-art water heater broke, you will not be reimbursed with this amount, it will be only $500 to $1500, depending on the plan you chose.

Clients of Choice home warranty and other home warranty companies in the market constantly make complains about these companies but it is extremely difficult to say how many of these complaints are justified, and whether as a whole clients are happy. User review platforms tend to attract disgruntled customers, so it makes perfect sense that most of the user experiences you can find online are negative. Like many other home warranty providers in the U.S they have been sued but then again it’s difficult to judge them based on a lawsuit from 2015, and if they stayed in business it is reasonable to believe they have improved certain aspects of the business.

The bottom line is that Choice home warranty is a leading home warranty company with very similar terms and conditions to other companies on the market. It’s hard to say whether home warranty as a product will save customer’s money, because it depends on the individual position of that customer. Make your own thorough considerations and calculations before you sign up with any home warranty service provider.