Prime Home Plans

In July of 2011 my wife and I purchased our home. During the process of our purchase, it was recommended that we invest in a home warranty in addition to our homeowner's insurance in case any of the appliances failed to work once our purchase was complete. We felt that this was a reasonable idea and after a few weeks of research, decided to purchase a policy from Central Mass Home Warranty. Upon contacting the toll free number listed on the website for Central Mass we were greeted by a salesperson who presented us with three plan options and price quotes for each. We chose to purchase the Premium Plan (the most inclusive coverage) on August 17th 2011. Upon receiving our policy documentation, we noticed that the company name was not stated as Central Mass Home Warranty as was discussed with the salesman Kevin Schmitt, but rather Prime Home Plans. Concerned by this, we naturally contacted him once more, and he assured us that the coverage was indeed in affiliation with Central Mass, and that we needn't be concerned. A few months went by without any problems with our home, but that abruptly changed when, at the end of November, our boiler began to malfunction. Grateful that we had the foresight to purchase a home warranty, we immediately called to file a claim. Upon initial contact with the company, we were told that they would locate and dispatch an approved technician to our home as soon as possible. Indeed, within the same day, a technician contacted us and came to our home to determine the problem. He was able to get our boiler up and running, but within 24 hours, it failed again. We once again contacted the customer service / claims department to inform them of our problem, and they said they would dispatch the technician again to ascertain the appropriate action. The decision made by the home warranty company in conjunction with the information provided by the technician's second visit was that rather than attempt more repairs, the boiler should and would be replaced. Work was approved by the home warranty company with a decision that, in accordance with our policy, my wife and I would receive reimbursement for our claim in the amount of $1500.00 Arrangements were made for the technician to begin the job as soon as possible. He procured the necessary replacement equipment and completed his work by December 10th 2011, at which time we paid him out-of-pocket. Upon receipt of his company's invoice on December 28th 2011, we submitted it to the home warranty company via email (inbox@myclaimagent.com) as instructed by the customer service / claims department, and began the process for reimbursement. This is where everything started to go wrong. After several weeks, we had received no communication from the company at all. Once again concerned, we tried to contact the home warranty company to inquire about our claim status. At first,we were told that the invoice had been received, that it was added to our claim file, and that typically, reimbursement would happen within 30 days. Patiently we waited for our check to arrive, but we continued to receive nothing. By February 8th 2012, repeated calls to the customer service / claims department have yielded absolutely no progress. All calls are answered by an automated system which often has us waiting to speak with a representative for 40+ minutes. If or when we actually speak to someone (so far we have been in contact with Tamika, Brian, Martha, Stephanie, Sabrina, James, and a few others), all we are told is that they do not know why our reimbursement has been held up and occasionally they apologize. Despite MANY assurances, none of our calls for escalation of this claim have been returned. Deciding that we'd had enough of the runaround, we began to investigate the company's history much more deeply. After a fair amount of digging, we learned that supposedly due to Central Mass's expansion, the president of the company, Robert Herre, stated that his organization " decided to outsource several of our covered states to another company temporarily until we are fully positioned in our newly expanded office area". This seemed to make sense, given that our policy stated that it was provided by Prime Home Plans. Herre provided his email address in a public forum in response to an accusation that Central Mass and their affiliated provider Prime Home Plans were nothing but a SCAM. We sent an email to Herre, as his forum response suggested, several days ago with no response. Today, the same email was sent once more, this time with an abbreviated response stating that Central Mass only issues policies as Central Mass and that we would have to contact Prime Home Plans. This information is a direct contradiction to Herre's earlier statement that Central Mass had decided to outsource their coverage to another company temporarily until they were fully positioned in their newly expanded office area. Even a simple internet search will yield the fact that these organizations are connected. Our most recent call to the customer service / claims department went similarly to all of the other ones we've made. Apologies, confusion as to why "the accounting department" hasn't issued our reimbursement, and so on. The representative claimed that he tried to transfer our call to his supervisor, a person by the name of Paul Harris, but that Harris was unavailable at that time. Finding this to be suspect as well, we used the additional information of the supervisor's name to do some more digging and found that Prime Home Plans is also known as Home Choice Plans and other company names as well. All of these so called "home warranty companies" apparently have the same "employees" and "supervisors" with all of the many toll free customer service numbers routing to the same place. Other consumers like ourselves also report having not received the reimbursements owed to them. We highly recommend that any consumer thinking about purchasing a home warranty be extremely careful to make sure that the policy they are purchasing is not at all connected with this bunch. It will be nothing but headaches and aggravation for MONTHS if you ever have to file a claim and expect reimbursement.