Complaint Review: Select Home Warranty LLC - Mahwah New Jersey

By Karin Price Mueller | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

 

When New Jersey consumers need help with a company or government agency, they often turn to the Bamboozled column.

 

While navigating through bureaucracy and cutting red tape, we try to make sense of questionable or confusing corporate practices.

 

We usually stick to assisting Jersey folks, but sometimes we get a request from an out-of-stater. In this case, a reader in California had a problem with a Mahwah-based company that has a wide reach, with dozens of lawsuits filed against it in New Jersey, more than 1,082 complaints filed against it with the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs — 994 of them remain open, the agency said — and 5,377 Better Business Bureau complaints against it nationwide in the past three years.

 

We figured it was worth a closer look.

 

Back in 2020, Susie Hogan purchased a three-year “platinum” home warranty plan from the Mahwah company, Select Home Warranty, for $1,448.85, records show. She paid extra to make sure her pool equipment, icemaker and two air conditioners would be covered, she said.

 

The first sign of trouble for Hogan was in July 2022, when there was a problem with her pool filter, she said. Her claim with the warranty company was initially denied, documents show. Hogan persisted, and in August 2022, a tech was sent to the home, for which she paid a $60 service fee.

 

The estimate was $1,300 for parts and labor.

 

“He said he would get in touch with Select Home Warranty and I never heard another word,” the 71-year-old widow said.

 

The next month, when the average temperature in her desert town was more than 103 degrees, the air conditioner that cools the bedrooms failed.

 

She called the warranty company, she said. The first time she was on hold for an hour and 17 minutes before she hung up, her records show. When she eventually got through, the news wasn’t good.

 

“They denied this claim because they said only the main AC is covered. They are both main ACs and I went over this when I purchased the policy,” she said. “I asked five times for a list of exclusions and I have not seen one exclusion or additional (coverage) that can be purchased.”

 

She said she replaced the air conditioner on her own — it cost $5,483 — because her bedrooms regularly reached 100 degrees or more.

 

Hogan continued to follow up by phone and email to try to get reimbursement, but she never got anywhere, she said.

 

Multiple attempts to contact Select Home Warranty via email, telephone, LinkedIn and Facebook were unsuccessful. Messages left for owner Joseph Shrem and the company’s director of customer service, David Moradi, both of Brooklyn, were not returned.

 

FIGHTING FOR SATISFACTION

 

Hogan wasn’t done with her fight.

 

She took Select Home Warranty to court.

 

Records from the Superior Court in Riverside County, California, show Hogan won a December 2022 default judgment against the company for $8,356.35, which included the cost of the warranty, the AC, pool repairs and court costs.

 

That was good, but it seems the company ignored the judgment.

 

So Hogan reached out to a collection company on the East Coast to see if it could help. It already had two judgments on its books against the warranty company, it later confirmed to Bamboozled. Hogan decided not to hire the company because it would have cost $1,800 with no guarantees.

 

Instead, she turned to the New Jersey courts, which have 14 other judgments against the company since 2018 totaling more than $63,000, court records show.

 

Another 47 lawsuits have been filed against the company in the state, with more than 40 filed in the past five years, court records show.

 

In New Jersey, Hogan filed an application to record a “foreign judgment,” which is needed to ask New Jersey to enforce a judgment obtained in another state.

 

 

This doesn’t guarantee the courts will successfully collect on your behalf, but you do have some recourse.

 

You can ask the court for a writ of execution, which gives “a sheriff the right to collect money from a judgment debtor’s income or assets,” the state court website says.

 

You can try to collect by garnishing someone’s wages, placing a levy on a bank account or even by seizing other assets, all of which must be approved by a judge.

 

Those methods, though, can be hard if you don’t know where someone works or banks.

 

You can, though, get an information subpoena from any New Jersey Special Civil Part office to try to find out. If the person or entity that owes the money ignores that, they can be held in contempt, which might give you some satisfaction, but it won’t necessarily help you get your money. If after 21 days the person doesn’t answer the subpoena, you can ask the court to allow you to subpoena banks or employers to help move things along.

 

If you’re still unsuccessful in getting your money, you might need to request new writs of execution — wage executions can last for 20 years but others may expire in two years — or you can ask for your judgment to be recorded as a lien against real estate owned by the debtor. You’d go on a list of creditors, and the lien would have to be paid before the property owner can sell it.

 

 

That’s a lot of work to do in New Jersey, especially all the way from California.

 

But Hogan wasn’t deterred and she said she’s taking the next steps with the courts to try to collect.

 

“I’m pissed,” she said. “I don’t think I’m ever going to see the money, but it’s just the principle. This company should be ashamed that they take advantage of people.”

 

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NJ Advance Media Research Editor Vinessa Erminio contributed to this report.

 

Karin Price Mueller may be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @KPMueller.