EVERYTHING RESIDENTIAL

Trying to use our home warranty was a waste of $100. The HVAC contractor they sent did everything possible to reject our claim for repair. He acted as ER's agent, even offering us $250 NOT to fix the system (we didn't take it). He said the system was not up to code (it was when it was installed), he said it was not maintained (we had 3 maintenance inspections within a year by a respected A/C firm and provided the paperwork to ER), then he said he could repair the system but we would have to pay about $2000 for him to bring the 25-year-old system up to code (not true, I checked with the building dept.) I'm a professional engineer - the story kept changing and it was fairly easy to tell we were not being dealt with honestly. His unconventional repair would only have been warranted for 30 days, so we asked ER to send a different (reputable) contractor. ER insisted that this contractor was the only one we could hire under our home warranty. We were so disappointed with their choice of contractor that we took care of the repair ourselves and did not renew our contract with ER. The contact people at ER knew nothing about A/C systems and relied solely on their contractor's statements to determine our coverage. When we complained to the Texas Real Estate Commission, they stated that we had to use the contractor ER chose because it was in our contract. This is true of most home warranties, but then those warranty companies don't promise "hand-selected, high quality and well-paid premium contractors so you'll never feel like a second-class customer."

Our first two service calls were routine plumbing problems and handled well. The third call was to detect and repair an under slab leak. The contractor they sent (the president of that company) spent all afternoon and could not locate the leak. As he packed up, he gave us an oral estimate, said the kitchen counters would have to be pulled, and did not want to pull permits for the job. We called Everything Residential and asked them to send a different plumber to find the leak - they refused. We ended up hiring an outside contractor who located and fixed the leak in 6 hours (thank you to that company). It saved us 7 feet of unnecessary tunneling and thousands of dollars of demolition in our kitchen. When we told Everything Residential how unprofessional the contractor was, they defended him. In the end, we paid a lot of money to use Everything Residential's contractors who were not held accountable for their unprofessional behavior. Obviously, we won't be renewing this contract.