Business

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Ratings for American Home Shield Higher on Sites That Earn Commissions From Them

American Home Shield is a company that advertises a variety of home warranties to cover major appliances and systems in your home if they need repair or replacement. Here is a recent commercial:


Certain trusted websites like BobVilla.com, ThisOldHouse.com, ConsumerAffairs.com, and Forbes.com give the company good to great reviews.

ThisOldHouse.com

“American Home Shield is a veteran in the home warranty industry and one of the best home warranty companies available to homeowners. … We rated American Home Shield a 94 out of 100 [emphasis added] and named it the best overall home warranty company. …”

Cons listed: ” ✘ Charges slightly higher monthly premiums than some providers: ✘ Guarantees repairs for only 30 days.”

“In general, American Home Shield home warranty reviews from existing customers are a mix of positive and negative reviews. Some customers are happy with quick fixes and an easy claims process, while some complain about denied claims and negative experiences with on-site technicians.”

BobVila.com

“Our Verdict: American Home Shield offers well-rounded home warranty policies that will likely appeal to a wide variety of homeowners. … Every facet of the customer experience is competently executed, and there are no glaring drawbacks with its services that might raise a red flag for potential customers.” [emphasis added]

ConsumerAffairs.com

“Overall, we find that American Home Shield offers good coverage at a fair rate. Prices are on the higher end of average for the industry but still pretty competitive, considering the level of coverage provided. It’s an especially smart fit if you like the idea of managing everything online.”

Based on over 11,000 customer reviews, the company was given 4.2 stars out of five . Under “cons,” the site said “some customer service complaints.”

Forbes Home

“Our Verdict: With decades of experience and multiple exceptionally comprehensive home warranty plans, American Home Shield is one of the top home warranty providers in the industry.”

Their editorial team gave the company 4.7 out of five stars but at the same time mentioned these CONS:

Cons for American Home Shield

*MOUSE PRINT:

It should be noted that all the above sites earn a commission on the sale of American Home Shield policies, and have disclosures like this:

Affiliate Disclosure: This Old House‘s Reviews Team is committed to delivering honest, objective, and independent reviews on home products and services. To support this business model, This Old House may be compensated if you purchase through links on our website.

However, the “reviews” on their websites look more like detailed marketing material about the company and its warranty plans rather than objective evaluations.

On the other hand, if you look at websites that collect reviews, ratings, and complaints by customers, and don’t earn a commission on sales about the companies they list, a very different picture emerges.

The Better Business Bureau has closed 27,120 complaints against the company in just the past three years. The complaints are what you would expect: delays in getting repairs, repairs that did not fix the problem, delays in getting reimbursements, and difficulty getting refunds for contract cancellation, etc.

The BBB has over 11,000 customer reviews on its website that give the company an average of 2.25 stars out of five. Despite this, the BBB has given the company a “B” rating presumably because the company responds to 100-percent of BBB complaints and many consumers accept the settlements offered.

Reviews posted on other sites that don’t earn a commission from American Home Shield are similarly low. Trustpilot gives the company 1.8 stars. Those on ComplaintsBoard average one-star. Yelp reviews average one-star.

So, it appears on sites that make money by posting their own reviews, ratings of the company are significantly higher than on complaint and review sites that don’t earn revenue in that way. Which would you believe?

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HP Sued Over Printers That Won’t Scan or Fax When Ink Is Low

Two consumers who bought Hewlett-Packard (HP) all-in-one printers are suing the company after they discovered that their machines would not scan or fax when it was low on ink or empty.

HP all-in-one

Of course, neither scanning nor faxing requires any ink in order to accomplish those tasks.

This case is essentially similar to a complaint filed against Canon last year where a consumer claimed that his printer stopped scanning when his ink cartridges were low or empty. [See story.]

*MOUSE PRINT:

The lawsuit against HP claims:

6. What HP fails to disclose is that, if even one of the ink cartridges is too low or empty, the scanning function on the “all-in-one” printer will be disabled and will not work as advertised (hereinafter, the “Design Flaw”).

7. None of HP’s advertising or marketing materials disclose the basic fact that its All-in-One Printers do not scan documents when the devices have low or empty ink cartridges.

12. HP’s intent is clear, namely, to have their multi-function devices revert to an inoperable “error state” so that a large subset of those multi-function device purchasers will purchase additional overpriced and unnecessary ink cartridges in order to be able to scan and to fax documents. The end goal is to increase the sales of one HP’s largest profit makers, ink.

So the consumers are suing for misrepresentation, breach of warranty, and unfair or deceptive practices.

A related issue alleges that some HP all-in-one printers won’t scan when their ink cartridges have plenty of ink but have expired. That was reported by two of our readers last year but is not raised in this lawsuit.

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Some Grocery Products Are “Price-Fixed” Preventing Deep Discounting

groceriesThis week we reveal a dirty little secret in the grocery business.

We’re in the midst of a nasty period of inflation putting pressure on many families’ grocery budgets. But in some cases, the problem is being exacerbated because of a little-known manufacturers’ policy that prevents stores from deep discounting certain products.

First, a little history. When MrConsumer was a teenager, he remembers going to wholesale showrooms with his mother to buy Corning Ware at 40% off. You could not get a discount at retail stores in New York because that brand was “fair-traded” — meaning that it had to be sold at full retail price.

Those days are gone, but the concept lives on in modified form under the retail concept called “resale price maintenance” (RPM). For years, high-end products like Sony, Apple, or Bose commanded (and still command) premium prices and are rarely advertised at deep discount. These brands are likely subject to “MAP” — minimum advertised prices. That is a related pricing scheme allowed by federal antitrust law [see pages 3-7] that permits a manufacturer to unilaterally “announce” the lowest price at which it will allow its products to be advertised. Retailers who violate “MAP” could lose out on advertising funding (co-op ad dollars) or be cut off as a distributor of the brand. However, mandatory minimum pricing contracts between manufacturers and retailers while no longer per se illegal, risk legal challenge.

In many court cases, MAP was justified in part because it was applied to sophisticated products that required salespeople at department stores to educate shoppers about the benefits of the particular brand, and the employment and training of these workers was a costly proposition. MAP gave retailers more margin to afford those extra expenses.

MrConsumer has long suspected that MAP had crept into the grocery business, where supermarkets were expected not to advertise certain famous brand products below a floor set by the manufacturer and certainly not be used as a loss leader to build store traffic.

Take this example of regular liquid Tide in the 92 oz. bottle. During early November, checking some supermarket and retail ads around the country, the price was never advertised below $11.95 (give or take a few pennies) except when it typically came with a retailer-supplied manufacturer’s $3 off coupon offered directly to customers. In that case, the price was never advertised below $8.95.

Tide from Amazon
Tide in three stores

How is it that all these independent sellers serving different parts of the country have identical sale prices and not one of them is lower? They are certainly not allowed to conspire with each other. So Tide had to be subject to MAP, I speculated. But how to prove it? Then along came Sam’s Club with the smoking gun.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Tide Sam's Club

There it was in black and white — Sam’s Club disclosed that Procter & Gamble, Tide’s manufacturer, had prevented it from advertising their price for this Tide product (a warehouse size) because their price was lower than the minimum price they were allowed to promote.

Gotcha!

We wrote to P&G to confirm this, and asked some very pointed questions. How do they justify applying MAP to grocery items (since there are no high-priced salespeople in store aisles needed to educate shoppers)? What other P&G products are subject to MAP? How common is MAP in the grocery business? And much more.

P&G has not responded despite multiple requests.

We believe that Tide and P&G are just the tip of the iceberg. The question is which other major consumer products manufacturers are preventing retailers from advertising deep discounts on grocery products at a time when shoppers’ budgets are being increasingly strained by inflation?

What are your thoughts? Should manufacturers be able to dictate sale prices to stores thus limiting discounts?