Home Warranty Of America - HWA insurance ripoff, deceptive trade practices, false advertising Lincolnshire Illinois

We are on the same page. However, to provide even further clarification (want to be sure I'm getting my message across, as that is the whole reason I'm at this website)...

I have owned numerous homes over the years and quite a few more rental properties. I have purchased many home warranties from many different companies. Sometimes these warranties are included when I purchase a new home. Other times, I have purchased the warranty directly myself, either after I purchased the home or during the actual closing.

Since I am buying and selling homes quite a lot, it is important to me that the warranty company stand behind their policy -- that is why I pay them a premium!

I have NEVER experienced the problem I described above with ANY OTHER WARRANTY COMPANY. That is why I am so irate!

By the way, ALL warranty companies have an exclusion for "pre-existing conditions/problems". When you purchase a home, there is typically an inspection process which you go through and which the warranty company relies on to reveal any pre-existing problems. If not, the warranty company may conduct their own inspection. Thus, a consumer could not purchase a warranty simply to have a problem fixed, then terminate the policy, as this would be excluded from the policy.

A few GOOD, HONEST warranty companies I have used include OLD REPUBLIC and AMERICAN HOME SHIELD. I plan on sticking with those 2 companies going forward.

A well written and thought out post and continuation. I did purchase the warranties for my benefit and the individuals buying my houses. Since I paid for the warranties and received some benefit, I was happy with their services. I bought the warranty for a set period of time, the time it took to sell the house and something like 90 days after the sale of the home. I never heard whether they had any problems or not, but the homes were in excellent condition so I don't think they needed the services. I didn't know you could buy a warranty in the manner you spoke of. I suspect the reason their policy is written in such a way is, because people would buy a policy, get some repairs done and then cancel the policy once the repairs are done.

Perhaps my explanation was unclear.

In your situation, you purchased the warranty in order to enhance the SALE of your home.

In my case, I was the OWNER/BUYER of the home, and I relied on having the warranty during the term of my ownership. During the term of our ownership, we had several small claims that we filed with HWA and they paid.

But, SURPRISE, when we finally sold the home, HWA made us pay those claims back to them!!! Thus, the warranty was worthless.

In other words, you may have thought you were making your 3 homes more attractive to sell when you purchased the HWA warranty for your buyers. But, in reality, the 3 buyers who purchased the 3 homes from you received a worthless warranty from you.

Hope that is more clear. And I hope your buyers didn't encounter any serious issues with their home.

I've had HWA on three of the houses I've sold and have never had any problems with them. They covered a couple of different things for me. You don't say and I don't know, what the term of coverage was on your home. When I bought the coverage, it was to cover; if anything went wrong while the house was up for sale and for a short period AFTER the house sold. I bought it as a selling tool. When people buy a house, they want to know that if anything should break down or go bad, they won't get hit with a major repair bill right after moving into someone else's house. It was part of the "selling" of the house. When you signed the paperwork was there a cancellation clause? Were the repairs more then the insurance? "Since you are forced to repay any claims once you sell your house and CANCEL YOUR POLICY". No one forced you to cancel your policy. That was your choice. "I'm just lucky I discovered all this before something really terrible went wrong with my home, only to find out I didn't have any coverage". That doesn't make any sense. I suspect you figured you'd try and get a few dollars back after the sell of your home because "nothing terrible",went wrong while you were trying to sell your home.