First American Home Warranty Review | Home Warranties

Choosing the best home warranty provider means researching your options and pinning down the features you value most in your home warranty coverage, whether that’s kitchen appliances, optional coverage, or the home warranty cost itself.

Below, we’ll review some of the features of First American Home Warranty to help you determine whether you should include this company in your home warranty comparison shopping.

Table of Content

• First American Home Warranty Services
• First American Home Warranty’s Credentials
• First American Home Warranty Accessibility
• First American Home Warranty’s Customer Satisfaction

First American Home Warranty Overview

First American Home Warranty offers two different annual service contracts (also known as a home warranty) that protect your home’s appliances and systems from breakdowns that require repairing or replacement. When your covered systems or appliances have an issue, First American Home Warranty will dispatch a service provider from its network to diagnose and fix the issue.

First American Home Warranty Home Services

What First American offers

First American Home Warranty offers two warranty plans with a standard $85 service fee:

1. The Basic Plan. First American Home Warranty’s Basic Plan only covers home appliances. The home appliances covered in this plan include refrigerators, ovens, clothes washers, cooktops, dryers, dishwashers, microwaves, range, garbage disposal and trash compactors.
2. The Premier Plan. The Premier Plan covers all the appliances from the Basic Plan with the addition of other major home systems. Covered items include plumbing, heaters, central vacuum, water heaters, heating systems, electrical systems, ductwork, plumbing stoppages, and the garage door opener.

First American Home Warranty also offers some optional add-on coverage for an additional monthly cost:

• Well pump
• Spa equipment
• Pool equipment
• HVAC, a/c units or air conditioning tuneups
• Septic system
• Septic tank pump
• Additional refrigerators
• Electric central air conditioning
• First class upgrade (covers things like appliance disposal, badly done installations, code upgrades, building permits, and more)

First American Home Warranty also offers products for landlords, real estate investors and homeowners in the process of buying or selling a home.

What First America doesn’t offer

Not everything is covered under the First American Home Warranty plans. The company does have exclusions for:

• Cosmetic issues
• Known pre-existing conditions
• Factory defects
• Routine tune-ups
• Damage from natural disasters
• Replacement of items with toxic materials like mold, mildew, and asbestos
• Issues brought by neglect, misuse, or poor maintenance
• Damage due to wood rot (i.e. from a broken pipe under the sink)

First American Home Warranty has coverage caps depending on the type of claim. This means that it’ll only pay up to a certain amount for a covered repair. For instance, First American won’t give you more than $3,500 for appliances. If your appliance replacement or repair exceeds the coverage cap, you‘d have to cover the difference.

Other First American Home Warranty coverage limits include:

• Plumbing system - $500
• Pool and spa equipment - $1,500
• Well pump - $1,500
• Water heater - $1,500
• Toilets (under First Class Upgrade) - $300 per occurrence
• Ductwork - $500

How the claims process works

When one of your home’s appliances or systems is malfunctioning, you can initiate a claim online or call the First American customer service number. A customer service representative will create a warranty claim number and send it immediately to the nearby service provider to request service, who will diagnose and fix your problem.

You’ll call the provider with your First American claim number to schedule a time for service. First American doesn’t pay its service providers until the work is complete to prevent prolonged, incomplete engagements.

In case of an emergency, if no service provider is immediately available after you contact customer service, you may be eligible for reimbursement if you use an out-of-network service provider.

There are many reasons why home warranty companies deny claims, but some of the most common include improper installation, lack of maintenance, or the system or appliance simply not being covered. While the best home insurance may help, in some more extreme cases you may need to turn to other options, such as a home improvement loan.

First American Home Warranty’s Credentials

First American Home Warranty was founded in 1984, and it has over half a million customers across the U.S., along with an extensive network of service providers. Since the company was founded, First American Home Warranty has serviced more than 8.6 million customers and fulfilled more than 13.5 million claims.

Licenses and registrations

The First American Home Warranty Corporation, the parent company of First American Home Warranty, shows an incorporation date of February 8th, 1984. The company is headquartered in Santa Rosa, California. First American has also registered several branches in states such as Florida, Wyoming, Indiana, North Carolina, and others.

Awards and certifications

First American Home Warranty is a legitimate company that has been a BBB (Better Business Bureau) accredited company since the year 2000. First American won the 2017 Editor's Choice Award from HomeWarrantyReviews.com.

Regulatory or legal actions

We haven’t found any regulatory or legal actions against First American Home Warranty. There also seem to be no complaints from home warranty industry watchdog groups or government indictments for fraudulent activities.

Note, although we always try to include accurate and up-to-date information on regulatory and legal actions, this information may not be complete or fully up to date. We recommend you do your own research for the latest information.

First American Home Warranty Accessibility

Availability

First American Home Warranty is available in 35 states in the US, excluding Alaska, Maine, Hawaii, New York, Illinois, Rhode Island, Delaware, Vermont, North Dakota, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Louisiana, and New Hampshire.

Contact information

If you are looking for a quote to start service or process a cancellation, you can contact First American Home Warranty by calling its phone number: 800-891-9778. You can also complete the First American Home Warranty online tool to request a call for an estimate and click here to see sample contracts.

For service requests, call 800-992-3400 or complete the online service request form on its website: www.homewarranty.firstam.com/account/login

User experience

First American’s website offers an adequate amount of information to help you understand its coverage options. The information about its plans is comprehensive, and the free quote form is simple. You can even use its online tool to build your own quote based on the types of coverage you will need.

Once you become a client, you can manage your claims online through your customer portal. This portal keeps track of your claim history and status.

The only feature the site lacks is the ability to start and pay for your home warranty service online. You must wait for a sales associate to call you directly who will collect your information, process payment and start your service.

Limitations

The main limitations are the company’s coverage caps, appliances and systems covered and states where it doesn’t provide coverage. You should request and review the proposed terms of service to understand exactly how your coverage works and what could void your home warranty.

First American Home Warranty’s Satisfaction Ratings

Customer complaints

While most reviewers on Trustpilot claim to have a positive experience with First American Home Warranty, although some customers posted complaints about poor service. Some complained of delayed responses for service requests and issues with fulfilling claims.

Third-party ratings

First American Home Warranty has been rated by third parties such as the BBB, Trustpilot, and Best Company. BBB gives it a strong B rating, Trustpilot a rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars from over 9,500 reviews, and Best Company a rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars from over 3,500 reviews.

This information is provided based on the information we have available at the time of publishing.

How We Evaluated First American Home Warranty

We based our evaluation of First American Home Warranty on publicly available information on its website and other third-party sources,looking into response times and emergency availability. Since cost is often top of mind, we also checked monthly costs, whether there was any flexibility, deductibles, and service call fees.

Finally, we also considered customer review sites like the Better Business Bureau and TrustPilot, industry watchdog reports, and information from consumer advocacy sites such as the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau.

Summary of First American Home Warranty Review

First American Home Warranty has a pretty standard service offering. We do like that the company covers rental properties and other real estate transactions like buying or selling a home. The company's website gives you an idea of your monthly premium and allows you to initiate and manage claims in your customer portal.

Overall, we like First American for its transparent estimates, online portal and ability to create a customized service package with additional coverage based on your home’s unique needs for greater peace of mind. If you are in the market for the best home warranty, make sure you include First American Home Warranty in your research.