Complaint Review: Select Home Warranty

Select Home Warranty, (SHW), sold me a bill of goods, as they say.  Their sales literature paints a nice picture but even after reading the fine print I couldn't find fault with their product.  That is, until I actually made a couple of claims.  

The first claim was for a minor roof leak, which they advertised as additional coverage to their normal coverage.  They recommended a local roofing company and I paid them the $60 estimate fee.  SHW advised me that they do not cover tile roofs like mine so I took the tiles off myself and the roofing company wrote up a proposal to "repair roof leak in the valley between the roof and vertical wall".  SHW denied the claim.  When I called the SHW claims number they simply restated that I wasn't covered but wouldn't tell me what wasn't covered and what they would cover.

If you read the roof coverage part of the policy, there is nothing that is covered.  But they provide roof leak coverage!  The roofing company that SHW recommended has been in business for 25 years and told me that SHW (and another popular warranty company) has never approved one of their proposals.

My second claim is even more hilarious, if it weren't so expensive to buy SHW.  My doorbell chime in the kitchen stopped working so I figured that since SHW covers electrical problems that they would cover that - nope!  Get this - the indoor chime isn't covered because SHW doesn't cover outside electrical issues and since the doorbell switch is outside and connected to the indoor chime - it's not covered.  As it turned out, the transformer had burned out and, after buying a new one at Lowes, I was able to fix the problem myself.  The transformer was $15 so I saved on the estimate fee.