LAS VEGAS — A major home warranty provider is under scrutiny from customers who say it isn’t living up to its promises to fix or replace broken appliances.
American Home Shield (AHS) is one of the nation’s leading providers of home warranty plans, boasting over 2.2 million subscribers. Frontdoor, the business’ publicly traded parent company, reported nearly $1.8 billion in revenue in fiscal 2023, up 7% from the year before, and executives have touted AHS to investors for maintaining “its category leading share of warranties attached to home purchases” this year.
That’s partly thanks to a recent marketing campaign starring “Saturday Night Live” alum Rachel Dratch, which the company said has helped jolt the public’s brand awareness of AHS from 39% two years ago to 54% now. In the TV commercials, Dratch plays “Warrantina,” a sometime fortune teller who urges clients to “protect their covered appliances and home systems” from future malfunctions, like leaky refrigerator coils and broken air-conditioning fans.
But some customers say they’ve had a hard time getting AHS to respond to common issues like those. They accuse the company of failing to make good on its promise to provide covered repairs for at least 23 home appliances — no matter the age, condition or repair history — even those with undetectable, pre-existing problems.
Julian Sanchez had been an AHS customer for nearly three years when the air conditioning system in his Las Vegas home broke down in May. The company sent a third-party repair technician to inspect the damaged 15-year-old unit, he said, only to leave it in worse shape.
“They removed a piece of my AC unit and left it on the roof,” said Sanchez, 34. “I expected it would be a quick diagnosis and a fix. What I got was the complete opposite.”
Sanchez said he’d always paid his monthly premiums of up to $72.99 in full and on time. But he said most of his daily calls to American Home Shield went unanswered, including after being placed on hold for over 45 minutes. When he finally reached a live operator, Sanchez said the person seemed uninformed and insufficiently trained to address his needs.
“Once you connect to someone, they have to push it up the chain,” he said. “They’ll just continually put you in a runaround.”
In the meantime, Sanchez and his wife, Patrician Nunez, 29, spent most days and nights with their five children on the ground floor of their home to stay cool. This summer saw scorching temperatures in the Las Vegas area, which has clocked 112 days over 100 degrees this year, according to the National Weather Service.
I expected it would be a quick diagnosis and a fix. What I got was the complete opposite.
AHS customer Julian Sanchez
“Most of the time in this room, it would reach onwards from the high nineties to the low hundreds,” Sanchez said during a tour of the upstairs bedrooms.
“There was no way we could be up there,” Nunez added. “We would have sleepovers in our living rooms because our daughters couldn’t sleep in the bedroom. “It was just way too hot.”
More repair technicians were dispatched over the ensuing six weeks. One refused to even look at the AC system because it had been disassembled, Sanchez said. Another concluded the damage was due to “foreign debris,” rather than the normal wear and tear covered by his contract.
New York-based consumer-rights attorney Alexander Bachuwa said that’s a common response from AHS.
“Every single case I have is the same: They come out there, they diagnose the problem and they say, ‘Not normal wear and tear,’” said Bachuwa, who has filed at least 50 claims and won over $44,000 for American Home Shield customers in the last few years. “They will find a way to deny your claim.”
AHS said it concluded after three separate inspections of Sanchez’s air conditioner that “the correct coverage decision was made.”
“We take great pride in providing quality service and protection to our members,” a company spokesperson said, adding that AHS has fielded over 319,000 service requests in the Las Vegas area, paying out more than $56 million between January 2022 and September 2024.” We are disappointed Mr. Sanchez’s expectations were not met.”
AHS said it refunded Sanchez a $125 service fee as an accommodation measure and ultimately offered to repair his air conditioner free of charge. Sanchez declined. Instead, he’s working with Bachuwa to push for a full replacement of his unit, at an estimated cost of at least $12,500. Sanchez says the system could have been fixed for far less when he filed his original claim.
Every single case I have is the same: They come out there, they diagnose the problem and they say, ‘Not normal wear and tear.’
consumer rights attorney Alexander Bachuwa
Many unhappy customers have little other recourse but to pursue a case in small-claims court or file an arbitration claim, Bachuwa said: “There are no class actions, per the terms and conditions in AHS’s contract, meaning each consumer must file an individual claim .”
AHS is rated 2 out of 5 stars on the Better Business Bureau’s website, which catalogs nearly 21,000 complaints against the company in the past three years. BBB spokesperson Melanie McGovern urged prospective customers of home warranty firms to look closely at their options before signing on the dotted line.
“The biggest thing consumers need to do is read the entire contract,” she said. “You want to understand everything that it does and doesn’t cover, read the complaint data, read the reviews, and then make your purchasing decision from there. Did the company respond? “Did they get it all settled?”
In the meantime, Sanchez said he wants AHS to take customers’ complaints more seriously and reconsider what it deems normal wear and tear on common appliances.
“I hope that they take the time to actually hear people, because it’s not just me,” he said. “They’re putting a lot of families in really tough situations.”