Fidelity National Home Warranty Cannot Depend on their Contract Concord California

My experience with Fidelity National Home Warranty is that they will try to avoid paying claims on their home warranty contracts. I bought a house last year in Arizona and the seller offered this to me. I figured maybe it was a good thing. When annual renewal time came around, I renewed but changed the plan to include pool coverage. Consequently, my premium was higher.

I had a part break inside the pipe which pumps water to the pop up heads for cleaning. I didn’t know what was leaking until the tech came out. When I called Fidelity National Home Warranty to set up the service call, they said a leak on an outside pipe would be covered. That’s what it appeared to be when a water gusher came out of the pipe. To a layman, it was obvious a seal in the pipe had broken.

When it came time to replace the part, Fidelity National Home Warranty said that it wasn’t covered because the “cleaning system” isn’t covered. I took exception to that interpretation since the “caretaker” assembly just sends water to the cleaning system but it does absolutely no cleaning itself. I could plainly see in the contract language that skimmers and other obvious cleaning parts like popups were excluded. I spoke to a customer service rep and got no satisfaction. I then talked to a manager named Aaron. I agreed that the cleaning system was clearly excluded in the wording but my position is that the “caretaker” assembly was not.  This is how they choose to interpret their contract language even though it is not clear or fair to consumer. (I believe that they should administer claims using exact policy language rather than a meaning they impute on their own.) I would like to make clear that we are talking about a minimal claim for just $180.00, which isn’t much for a pool repair.

I asked Aaron to speak with his supervisor, whom I was told would be a Vice President. Aaron refused twice when asked to transfer me to a Vice President to discuss this matter. Apparently the Vice Presidents at Fidelity National Home Warranty think they are too good to accept calls from mere customers. I was simply told that I would not be transferred to the Vice President. So what this implies to me is that, I can just stuff it if I don’t like the denial.

By way of background, I am also a Vice President at a service company and I would never think of not handling an escalated problem. That is the proper way to deal with customer service issues.

The bottom line is that I was forced to pay the charge of $180 for the repair, and despite asking for the $65 service call to be waived (since they denied my claim). I had to pay that too.

I believe the so called resolution of this matter is unacceptable since I was initially told the repair would be covered. I requested a service call based on that. Fidelity National Home Warranty misrepresented what I could count on them to do for this repair. I could have called someone else and had the work done otherwise and not had to pay for their $65 service call charge.

This leaves me with the conclusion that Fidelity National Home Warranty has subjective and unfair claim practices and that their “contract” is not worth the several hundred dollars they charge for it. You just can’t rely on them to accurately let you know for sure whether something is covered until the tech looks at it. And then you’re out $65 for nothing anyway.

I also strongly recommend against doing business with this company or you may very well regret it.