WWYD in this situation? (problem with homeowner's insurance and AC company)

[Ofuh]

Ok so "we" actually I guess my mom, have this homeowner's insurance where you can call them up and they will come to your house for a flat rate of $55 (or $45 I don't remember, but it is not important anyway) and either tell you that the work is not covered by the insurance, which happens too often, and you have to give them the check and they leave without doing a thing. Or they will do the work for 55 dollars. One time it really payed off as the work to repair a wall that had a pipe leak and turned it all to mush would of cost upwards of 2000 dollars had we not had the insurance.

In case I lost some of you guys in all the unecessary details above here is what will happen when they come.
They tell you it is not covered by the insurance policy, you have to give them the check and they leave. You're $55 in the hole.
They will start working on it and when they've fixed it/finished the job you sign the papers and read over it, pay the $55 and they leave.

So here's what happened two weeks ago.
The pipes in the air conditioner were leaking. I did what I could with tools you would find at home to attempt to fix it. When I saw it did not do much at all, I told my mom to call the company to fix it. They schedule the appointment for the guy to come. He comes on that Friday, after a couple hours of him working in the garage and digging in the side of the house to pull out pipes and stuff, he opens the door to tell me he's finished. I asked him what was the problem, what we can do next time to prevent it, he explains what happened and what we should do. We talk a little bit, then he goes to show me what he did on the side of the house. He's all done, I look over the receipt, sign it, then he leaves.

The next day I go check out the garage to see if the pipes are dry now, but I can still feel water. I think, well, maybe it is just the water that was already in there that's draining out tomorrow it will be fine. As you can probably guess, it wasn't fine the next day. It was still just as wet, and my mom noticed another spot that was wet (I can't be sure if that other spot was wet already before or not)

So she calls them back, talks to them a bit. Afterwards she tells me that the work is supposedly not covered by the insurance company. I told her "that's BS, the guy came and worked on it then told me everything was fine; if it iisn't covered they tell you right away and then leave. Even the receipt doesn't even slightly suggest that the work was incomplete or something else needs to be done."

She calls them up again, supposedly the "technician" (technician, my ass, half his words were misspelled in his report on the receipt) knew it all along or something that it was not covered, I don't know.. it doesn't make any sense.

I'm telling my mom that we can't let ourselves get screwed over like this. The problem is that she's too nice on the phone. She needs to show them we mean business. She's the type of person that while talking to the operator she is like "oh, I'm not upset at you I know you're just doing your job" and other stuff like that; she does not sound like she is pissed off. So up until now there have been several back and forth phone calls and now we are supposedly going to speak to the manager.

I tell her that the guy told us the job was finished, everything was fine. That we should get the job finished and everything be fine regardless of it being covered or not, the guy should not of said that it was finished if it wasn't and he supposedly knew it all along. My mom has absolutely no fight in her, if she wasn't my mom I would really believe that she was siding with them. I feel like I'm going to have to talk to the manager myself and not try to sugarcoat everything like my mom does.

cliff's notes-
-guy came over to fix the air conditioner
-guy said the job was done and everything's fine now
-turns out the job is not done, everything isn't fine
-when we call them back they tell us the work isn't covered by the insurance
-when the guy came to work he clearly said it was finished and did not mention a thing at all about it requiring anything else or it not being covered
-my mom has been talking to the insurance company and the AC company on the phone
-we will supposedly be talking to the manager of the AC company sometime this week


What do you guys think? Don't you think we're entitled to have a "finished job", as the technician said he did? Or at the very least some kind of refund or credit on the next call?
What would you guys do or how would you handle it?

Regardless of what happens I'm going to write them on the BBB (Better Business Bureau)


We're not getting hosed this time

 

[BasketCase]

If they do the repairs wrong, then it's their responsibility to fix it. Free of charge.

It does sound like you're going to have to take up the banner on this one. "Nice" only works up to a point, and this incident has passed that point. Further "nice" will merely result in the insurance people walking all over you.

How do I know? Because I used to be that nice guy.

 

[skadistic]

If they do the repairs wrong, then it's their responsibility to fix it. Free of charge.

It does sound like you're going to have to take up the banner on this one. "Nice" only works up to a point, and this incident has passed that point. Further "nice" will merely result in the insurance people walking all over you.

How do I know? Because I used to be that nice guy.

So true. Insurance is not your friend so don't treat them as such. Be stern and confident. The old" Well I'll see what my lawyer has to say" bit can go far.

 

[joycem10]

Fist off, whats your jurisdiction. If US give me a state. Second off, give me the carrier's name.

This does not sound like a homeowners policy this sounds like a home warranty policy on a newly purchased home, is that the case?

Your insurance company (assuming a common law jurisdiction) is required to provide a coverage position within a reasonable period of time free of charge. No carrier can charge its customers to evaluate coverage. Thats why I question if this is a homeowners policy. If it is, this is the worst kind of fly by night, bottom of the barrell carrier who is just looking for a bad faith suit.

 

[BasketCase]

Oh, hey--just remembered something that happened to me about ten years ago.

I was in a really bad car accident. As in, vehicle was a total loss and I ended up in the hospital. The auto insurance company rolled over and ponied up.

Then, as I was walking out of the insurance office with the final documents in my hand, I noticed something. On the vehicle description, the car was described as having 25,000 miles on it. That was false; the car had only had 6000 miles on it when I'd had the accident. So I walked right back in the door and got in the insurance rep's face.

What I heard next was just rich. The insurance company assessor had, in fact, seen the odometer as reading 6000 miles!!! He SAW it with his own eyes. His lame-ass story was priceless: the car was so badly damaged that he figured the odometer had to be wrong--so the insurance company chose a mileage which the average two-year-old car is supposed to have.

I caught them red-handed, they caved in and redid the documents, and I got a couple thousand dollars more in the settlement.


That's how brazen an insurance company can get. Don't trust them. Ever. Watchdog them every single step of the way, and make sure they know you're doing it.

 

[Godwynn]

A pipeline broke in front of my house and flooded the basement. An unnamed insurance company (STATE FARM) claimed it was an act of God.

I'll have my revenge one day.

 

[Ofuh]

Hmm you are correct it might be a home warranty, I'm not 100% sure though I'd have to check (I'm not at home right now)

We were going to call them this morning to speak to the manager, but both me and my mom were late her to work and me to class so it didn't happen.

I'm tempted to use the "well I'll see what my lawyer has to say" thing, but I'm afraid to since I've never went to court and I'm afraid of ending up more in the hole than we are now.

They're not getting out of this easy though. Even if I have to show up at their office in person.

Their policy is that if it isn't covered they won't attempt to fix it. Now they attempted to fix it, said it was fixed, then later tell us they supposedly knew all along it wasn't covered.
I want to speak to that "technician" directly and see what he told them and what he says about it. He seemed like a nice guy at first, he was even talking to me about the punching bag I have in my garage. I have a hard time believing he "knew" all along it wasn't covered, or that he even knew that there was more work to be done.

I have the damn receipt, and even if you have a wild imagination you could not even find anything that suggest that they would even think about the job not being complete because it was not covered.

 

[warpus]

I don't understand why you can't just look at some list, or determine whether whatever the problem is is covered or not.

Or do they just make it up on the spot?

 

[Ofuh]

I don't understand why you can't just look at some list, or determine whether whatever the problem is is covered or not.

Or do they just make it up on the spot?

Well there are some general problems that may have specific causes which makes the problem be different than if it was another cause, if you follow my drift.

For example (not saying this is their policy)
You have a leak in the wall. The pipe may be disconnected, or it may be busted. If it is disconnected they fix it, if it's busted they don't. They can't really tell that unless they come over here or unless you are skilled enough to determine yourself without breaking open the wall, which in that case you probably don't need them to come over anyway.

 

[Ofuh]

Update, spoke to some customer service chick earlier today, must of been a change to them from hearing my mom's wannabe pissed off voice which not only is not threatening by itself but she tries to sugarcoat it because she "doesn't want to take it out on the customer rep" to my stern manly voice
Anyway, she tries to feed me some BS that I don't buy, now she's the one like "Sorry" etc trying to be all nice cuz she knows now I mean business. In the end she tells me that she is going to try to talk to the service manager and then call me back when she finished, might be today or tomorrow.

About 40 minutes ago I had just finished talking to my brother on the phone that the phone rings and it is them. I originally planned to not pick it up today, wanting to discuss it with my mom but I figured maybe they tried to call while I was on the phone and it was busy so they know I'm here anyway. So I pick it up and it is a different chick on the phone. Turns out she's the manager, wasn't expecting a woman to be the manager of some mechanic type company, lol.
Anyway I forget how the convo starts, but she introduces herself and we start talking about the problem. All the while I don't let myself get cornered. I'm not going to try to go over the whole conversation which lasted about 30 minutes. Turns out that the other thing that needs to be fixed is the coils which are dirty, but the tech is supposedly not allowed to do so because of whatever reason. Their policy with the home warranty place is supposedly that they have to call up the home warranty to get a quote on how much it would cost them to repair that, and get back to us within 24 hours with the price (we never got that call.) Turns out that the guy is also supposed to give us a packet when he leaves that deals with what happens when other things need to be done, we did not get that packet.
Lady must of apologized for the tech guy and the callers for not making the call at least a dozen times. She eventually says that she is going to send someone over on Friday to look at it and see if anything else went wrong and give us a price on what it is they are going to do.

I'm not completely satisfied, but at least I know that they were not trying to do some shady business or are completely incompetent. Just the tech guy that forgot. But I'm still going to see to it that we don't pay the full price tag on the additional repairs because of all the troubles caused. The repairs are needed because if it keeps like this it will eventually stop working completely)