Their double wall oven went kaput in May 2020.
They were grateful for their home warranty policy, then held by Total Home Protection. They had paid $699 for the coverage, which would pay to repair or replace covered appliances.
The warranty company sent a service technician to their Monroe home. The repair would cost $500, the tech said.
“Total Home Protection refused to pay because they claimed it could break again and gave us $350 instead,” David Mason said, and they used the money to get it repaired themselves.
Soon after, he said, their garbage disposal broke. The warranty did pay for that repair, he said.
Next, in June 2022, their clothes dryer stopped working.
“Total Home Protection claimed it would not pay for its repair, but would give us $200. Obviously this figure would not nearly cover the cost of a replacement, but we had no choice,” Mason said. “We bought a new dryer for $873.26.”
But the Masons never received their $200, they said.
It’s now eight months later. No money. And the company has changed its name to ServicePlus.
The couple said they called the company at least 13 times.
“On each occasion, we were told the check will be processed within two weeks, and we still have not received the check,” he said, noting they also mailed a letter to the company’s Edison offices, but they received no response.
Eight months for a lousy $200.
The couple filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau on Nov. 20 and again on Feb. 25, they said. Then they asked Bamboozled for help.
SHOW ME THE MONEY?
We received the couple’s call log and letter to the company.
We asked ServicePlus to take another look while we took a closer look at the company.
Consumers have filed 1,434 complaints against the company with the Better Business Bureau in the last three years, and 463 complaints in the last 12 months.
In December 2021, Total Home Protection and its owner, David Seruya, reached a settlement with the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office. The parties agreed to pay $750,000, including $400,000 in restitution to customers, to settle allegations of “deceptive marketing practices.”
The attorney general’s office said the company and Seruya advertised and sold home warranty service contracts for which they “used creative and deceptive means to wrongfully deny covered claims, failed to respond to consumer claims and inquiries, and refused to reimburse or refund consumers in accordance with the terms of their written guarantees.”
New Jersey consumers have filed 141 complaints against ServicePlus with the Division of Consumer Affairs since 2017, the agency said. Of those, 65 have been closed and 76 remain “open and under review.” There were also 84 complaints filed against Total Home Protection, all of which are closed, Consumer Affairs said.
There’s also been a class action lawsuit filed against ServicePlus, accusing the company of violating telemarketing laws. The suit claims the company “rebranded to escape the stigma” of the Total Home Protection settlement with Pennsylvania when it changed its name to ServicePlus.
About an hour after we emailed several people at ServicePlus, the Masons received an unsigned email from ServicePlus with the subject line: “Your Check Has Been Mailed.”
That was great news, but we had questions, including what happened in this case and whether the company, or Seruya, had any comment about the Pennsylvania settlement or the allegations in the class action suit.
Spokeswoman Laura Donovan said in an email that ServicePlus handles tens of thousands of service requests per year, so the 141 complaints with Consumer Affairs represents less than 1% of its contracts.
“Our service agreement, as with other home warranty providers, does have certain limitations and exclusions,” she said. “It is common in this industry for a consumer to file a complaint in the event a claim does not meet their expectations; nevertheless, there are two sides to every story and we always look for a fair resolution between all parties.”
She said the Mason’s claim was valid. They filed it when the policy was in force, but the tech didn’t send his report until after the warranty had expired, Donovan said. That meant it had to be added to the system manually, something the case manager was “not mindful of,” she said.