FIRST AMERICAN WARRANTY

I have 3 open Service Requests that have been pending for 5 weeks and can get no help from First American getting contractors here. The 1st one was called in on 7/10 for a small leak in my pool pump. The guy came and said he needed to order 2 parts. He called me 3 days later and said he has the parts, and when he gets back over in Escondido he'll give me a call. Never heard from him again. I've done multiple "Recalls" through FirstAm. I've called FirstAm to request a new contractor and they just say they'll send the contractor a reminder. The 2nd one was when my pool heater went on by itself (with switch clearly in "Off") and because there was no water going thru it, it melted some PVC pipes. Same thing: Contractor came and took some pictures, said he needed to order some parts, then never heard from them again. The 3rd unresolved service request: My downstairs AC stops blowing after an hour. I waited 3 weeks for the contractor to come (yesterday) and took a day off work so I would be here when the contractor came. He called and said he's having trouble with his truck and I'll need to re-schedule. I called FirstAm and they got me a new appointment with a new contractor, a week from now. So that is one month during a heat wave with degraded AC. Now if that contractor shows up next week, if he is like the other FirstAm contractors, he'll say he needs to order some parts and I'll never hear from him again. FirstAm is a terrible company. When I call there, it takes 30 min for a human to answer, then it is somebody in a foreign country who speaks broken English and only reads from a script. What is most disgusting: The whole time a customer is on hold, the recording keeps saying "You can get faster service if you go to the FAHW website, where you can manage all your service requests". I have tried that 4 times and it takes 8 days to get a response, then the response is just "we're investigating". Also on that site you can click "Recall" on any service requests that were un-resolved. I did that many times for all 3 of the above unresolved service requests, and nothing happens. Terrible service from FirstAm.

This was a typically terbbile experience with First American. The only good news was we knew First Am by now and expected the worst (which would be their best). Both furnaces stopped working. The first contractor came out and looked at each unit. The first unit was declared as having a cracked heat exchanger while the 2nd was pronounced "not up to code" and he wouldn't even look at it. The short story: both would have to be replaced at an insane cost. I called for a 2nd opinion and they sent someone else out. He didn't verify the cracked heat exchanger but did comment there was nothing wrong with the 2nd unit and certainly no reason it couldn't be fixed. He diagnosed it as some sort of a valve that needed to be replaced. Meanwhile I asked for a 2nd opinion on the first unit since the 2nd guy (did I lose you yet?) didn't even look at it. So we had another guy come out and he didn't find anything wrong but he did ask 1 key question: did both units fail at the same time? Yes. Then he tested the gas pressure and figured out that it was too low- too low means the unit will start up, realize there is insufficient pressure and shut-off for safety reasons. He checked the other unit- same problem. At the 3rd guys reco we called PG&E and then came out and verfied it was a problem with our earthquake valve. That was reset and both furnances magically worked again. The problem was it took 4 weeks to get to this point. But this was par for the course with the company. On no occasion did First Am send a contractor who nailed the problem on the first try. It was the same with the electrician (diagnosis: blown fixtures- actual problem: blown light bulb), plumber (diagnosis: cracked pipe: actual: clogged line with some roots). And on and on. First Am was a truly a terrible experience except for the pool repair guy who just came, did the job and left.

Our dryer broke down and wouldn't start. The home we just bought came with a First American home warranty, so we filed a claim. That was April 6. First experience was not too bad -- they dispatched a technician (Gilbert) promptly and he checked the dryer out. He had to order parts so we waited a week for a return visit. When Gilbert returned, he tried again and still could not fix the dryer. Called and ordered more parts. We waited another week. On his third visit, Gilbert concluded trying to repair the dryer probably wouldn't work (it was about 20 years old), so he called First American and recommended a replacement. After that we got stuck for about a week and a half of being told they were still "waiting for authorization" for replacement, and someone in First Am's back office telling Gilbert to try yet another repair. What was the authorizer thinking? At that point they were probably spending more on parts and technician charges than the dryer was worth. At this point the dryer had been broken for a month and we'd absolutely had it. We called our real estate agent, and she called her contacts in the First American sales team. Iris and Georgiana (an absolute star in my book) took over. Georgiana got the authorization the morning after our realtor called, got me a proposed replacement model number the next day, and we had our replacement dryer delivered and installed within 4 days from when I complained. Georgiana called every day to let me know how things were going. Iris is also arranging to have the service fee waived because we had such a bad experience. If I had known the repair process was going to take a month, I would have called our realtor immediately the first day we filed the claim. Normally with this kind of experience, I would give them an F grade and swear off ever working with this service provider ever again. But Georgiana did a great job of rescuing the situation, so I'm willing to give them another chance. Hopefully any future repairs go much better than this one did.

On December 20th, 2012, I called First American to dispatch a heater repair service, as the blower of my heater was failing, and giving signs of slow starts. It took 3 weeks to get the service call completed, at the height of the cold season. The heater blower ended up failing on 12-21-12, and the house was cold, about 55 degrees F, during those three weeks. The failures of the service were: - no call back within the promised one business day deadline from the original call - scheduling of the service call 10 days after the work order was opened (despite its website and online claims of 24/7 service, the dispatched vendor, EcoSystem, did not schedule a visit until 1-2-13) - the vendor dispatched, EcoSystems, was a no show on the 1-2-13 scheduled appointment; they did not proactively call to reschedule, I had to do that myself - the vendor repairman was barely speaking English; he did not check or test the system, and basically just took out the blower engine, with no to little explanations - the vendor dispatched by First American did not keep me posted daily, as I had asked them to, for the estimated time of the repair - First American home warranty online representatives would take 2 to 3 days to respond to online messages, which would be useless and not timely - the repair was finally done on 1-11-13, a full three weeks after the original claim - I reached out in writing to the CEO of First American, to ask for two years of service free, representing a 20% discount for such poor service; such a request was a simple demand for a gesture showing that continued business is valued by First American - I was sent a form letter by the claims department, denying my request - the next day, I received the warranty renewal invoice for next year - it goes without saying that I won't renew: home warranties are a sad excuse of a product, and will not get you the service and attention of the vendors they employ

Very responsive to a plumbing service request I phoned in. Over the weekend. They don't cover that service. So service level seemed good but coverage itself wasn't great.