Sensible Home Warranty Be warned: a total scam! Nationwide

Sensible Home Warranty is a total scam outfit.  I bought a 3-year policy in September, 2012 for $900, and used it twice.  The first time I ended up getting my hot water heater replaced, which was good, but found out later that the plumbing company had enormous difficulty getting reimbursed.  They ending up calling Sensible Home Warranty multiple times a day for weeks on end until they finally managed to get paid, and of course vowed never to do business with Sensible again.  The second time an electrician fixed a wiring problem, but again wasn't getting reimbursed.  The electrician sent letters to me and other Sensible customers he'd done work for, threatening to put a Mechanics Lien on our properties.  He didn't want to do that, but felt he had no choice; if he had waited any longer the legal deadline would have passed.  After enormous efforts, including me making numerous calls to Sensible to demand they pay him, they finally ponied up.

At that point I cancelled my policy which had two years left on it, and asked for a pro-rata refund as specified in my contract.  After several email exchanges, their salesman agreed that I was due the money.  But of course they never sent it.  I called and emailed repeatedly, and was told it was on its, or that it would take 10 business days, or that the service representative would contact the billing department, but nothing ever happened.  When I asked to speak to a supervisor, the supervisor was always at lunch or on break and would call me back later but never did.  I'd be given the billing department's phone number and always get it's voicemail and never a call back.  I considered filing a small claims court lawsuit, but would have had to try to serve notice in New York (I'm in California) at considerable cost.  And even after winning such a lawsuit I probably couldn't have attached any assets to get Sensible to pay the judgement.

So it looks like Sensible Home Warranty will get away with screwing another customer (me).  I can only hope that they will quickly go bankrupt before they rip off too many more people, and perhaps one day the company officers will go to jail for fraud.  In the meantime, I'll add my voice to the many other warnings, so that potential buyers will know the mess they will be in for and potential contractors will know to avoid Sensible Home Warranty like the plague.