Cinch Home Warranty horrors revealed as more Texans share nightmare stories

Last week, I told you the story of Wilma Carter of Plano who went without air conditioning for 39 days during this hot of hottest summers.

Hers was a cautionary tale about the dangers of signing up for a home warranty repair company that looks to always do everything the cheapest way possible if it even finishes the job.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, something is rotten in Florida-based Cinch Home Warranty.

Two more North Texans have come forward with “if you think that was bad wait until you hear what Cinch did to me” stories. These stories I’ll share are almost blood-curdling in the pain the company has caused its customers. These stories make you feel grateful you’re not stuck in the same Twilight Zone as these poor folks.

Having studied three cases, a pattern emerges. If it’s broken, Cinch may say they don’t cover it. But if they do, a repair person arrives and recommends a full replacement of whatever appliance or system is down. But up the Cinch chain of command, a manager vetoes that and looks to find the cheapest way to repair.

This leads to a delay in finding a needed part, and sometimes the tech shows up with the wrong part.

Then the customer goes into a long slide of no electricity in their house or, as in these cases, no air conditioning for weeks and weeks in the hot summer.

The customer is told to pay an exorbitant amount for the repair, which defeats the entire purpose of a home warranty contract anyway.

Oh, and the company doesn’t seem to care.

No air conditioning

If this were the Olympics of bad home warranty plans, my two subjects are both gold medalists.

Problems for the Baumans of Oak Cliff began when a tech showed up to check their air conditioning and blew up their breaker box with sparks a flying.

The whole house lost electricity, and along with it, their A/C, Stevette Bauman tells me.

An A/C call suddenly became an electrician’s problem. Unfortunately, the home’s breaker box was in a bedroom closet, not permissible under modern city code.

To move it and repair the A/C would cost $6,500. The whole point of a good warranty company is that you don’t get a bill like that, except here you do.

The family bought two portable air conditioners for a thousand dollars. They couldn’t use their pool this summer with their grand kids because they couldn’t run the pool pump. Their pool is green, and half drained from the summer heat.

They lost food in their refrigerator, couldn’t use their computer or their television.

As of this writing, the family has been without A/C for 78 days.

The holdup is that Bauman says she doesn’t want to pay $6,500 when she originally was quoted $2,500.

A company representative gave The Watchdog a written statement that states the breaker box was outdated and failed. “The panel would need to be replaced, rewired and relocated to an exterior or garage wall,” the company argues.

The panel repair is covered, but the cost for relocation to bring it up to code is the Baumans’ responsibility, Cinch says.

Cinch says it “will continue working directly with the homeowners on the resolution of their choice.” Once the Baumans approve repair and rewiring and get that done, Cinch will work on the A/C.

Claims numbers don’t add up

The good news for customer Preston Silvey of Plano is that Cinch replaced his water heater and fixed his garage door.

The bad news is that Cinch tossed him around with his floor leak, his refrigerator, his oven and his A/C unit, which, of course, he lost for a month during summer 2022.

“Everyone agreed that the A/C should be replaced except the manager,” he recalls. He paid $800 for a compressor that didn’t work.

The water leak wasn’t covered. Six different techs came by to try and fix his refrigerator. Finally, he gave up and bought a new one.

When his oven broke, five techs tried to fix it, but nobody could find the right part. Cinch offered a replacement oven, but it didn’t fit the space and size of the original oven. Instead, he took a buyout from Cinch and received $650 to help pay for a replacement he bought on his own.

“They weren’t as responsive as I would have preferred,” he says. “I would not recommend them to anybody.”

Cinch told me that Silvey made 24 claims in 11 years. “During that time, we resolved 24 claims for him. We acknowledge there were some delays in some claims, and while some were caused by industry-wide parts and appliance shortages during the pandemic, any delay is not consistent with our high standards for customer service.”

Silvey responds: “It’s interesting that they considered a recurring issue of the refrigerator to be something that they would count in their number of claims resolved.”

Where to complain

Both families say they would be better off if they had hired someone outside of the company. The Baumans say they will begin putting money away in a separate bank account to pay for future repairs.

Like my original victim, Wilma Carter, neither the Baumans nor Preston Silvey, and like almost everyone else on the planet, didn’t know that they should complain to the licensing authority, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.

The company is already in hot water (and not because of a water heater installed somewhere). A spokeswoman for TDLR told me that “several enforcement cases” are under investigation involving Cinch and related companies.

They are collecting stories that have something in common: almost blood-curdling in the pain the company has caused these customers.