Executive functioning (Part Deux) & Home Warrantee (8 days & $200 vs. 1 day & $100)

Letter from Iowa:

Hi,

Ok I just spent 1.5 hours gathering information, initiating claims, calling repair people to get "home warrantee" work done on the house. Nothing has actually been fixed just executive functioning, to arrange for further need of more executive functioning.

The warrantee people make this sound like a fun carefree way to have your problems taken care of.

Maybe for people who have high level executive functions. I consider it torture.

5 items to fix:

1. Clothes washer - only dribbles hot water - gentle cycle; sticks though this cannot be replicated
2. Garage doors - old and working intermittently
3. Oven - self cleaning feature & latch broke
4. Ceiling fan - hummm loud and wall switch broke
5. Swinging kitchen door, mechanism for holding door open broke

Home Warrantee process:

1) Itemize problems & model numbers & serial numbers

2) review contract to see if problem qualifies (akin to reading a home mortgage policy)
a) Clause states that garage door levers, rollers not covered
b) Kitchen Door - doesn't seem to be covered

3) Login to website and key in all claim information
a) The site responds to your claim with either
1) contact information for you contact a preapproved vendor
2) Ask you to contact a local vendor and arrange for a diagnosis and then send in estimate for approval

4) Call pre-approved repair people
a) they ask for all the same claim information that was asked for by warrantee company
b) they will arrange a time for a diagnostic visit. They ask for a 8 hour window on choice of two days over the next two weeks
1) The oven and washer use same repair company but they require two visits on two different days for which they ask a 8 hour window.

5) Find and call repair people for a diagnosis of out of-system-repairmen
a) Their estimate needs to be approved by the warrantee people before work done.

6) Arrange to wait for all the repair guys to come by and provide estimates, appears to be up to four days of waiting.

7) Provide warrantee company with estimate and wait for their approval

8) Arrange for repairs, up to 4 more days.

9) each repair has a $50 deductible

10) so using the warrantee system there are 2 hours of phone work, 8 days of waiting for repairmen & $200 of deductible fees, if everything is approved. Plus you need to keep track of 5 companies, contacts, schedules.

11) My guestimate of doing it myself would be 1 day of labor and $100 in parts, albeit with more technical functioning and much less executive functioning.

12) Funny how this executive functioning may not necessarily be the best way to do something. (this begs for further study)

Andy