Wed morning, we called HMS Home Warranty to report our AC broken. They gave us a claim number & service provider and offered to set up the fixing appointment. She put me on hold, and came back to tell me that she had left a detailed message for them and if I hadn't heard anything in 2 hours I should call HMS back and they'd contact a second provider. I was told that broken AC was considered "high priority" when it was going to be over 100 degrees. (Thank you Baltimore for your broken records?)
2 hours later, Mike called them back because we hadn't heard anything. He was told that we had to wait *4* hours before they would call a 2nd provider. Fine, ok.
He called back at the 4 hour mark because we had yet to hear anything from the original place. I wasn't expecting to be fixed in 4 hours, but I thought they could have at least called back. HMS put Mike on hold, came back and said they left messages on 5 providers machines and had an appt for us for Friday. They gave Mike the contact info and said the company would call to set up a time shortly.
Meanwhile, since I didn't know Mike had called HMS back, I called the original provider they told us about. I thought maybe they hadn't checked their voicemail or our paper had gotten lost or whatever. The lady was not happy with me. Well, really, she wasn't happy with HMS but it was me who got the brunt of it. Apparently HMS called them to cancel a Monday appointment, but as the lady said, "I never MADE an appt for you for Monday!"
Ok fine, so we had an appt set for Friday and we were ok with that.
By Thursday at lunch, Mike still hadn't heard from the Friday appt people with a time. We were trying to figure out if we were going to stay at our house or go to his parents and weren't going to bother leaving if they were coming early Friday. I was not exactly surprised when Mike called them and they said the same thing as the first company - We never HAD an appointment.
Mike went nuts (in general, not at the company, since it wasn't their fault) and called HMS back. The man he talked to explained that HMS is supposed to call and speak to people at 3 companies and that messages don't count. He didn't know how this got so messy and gave us permission to call anyone who was licensed who would accept 3rd party billing.
Enter these guys - Maryland Climate Control. They said if we didn't mind waiting til 8pm, they could come that night. Spectacular! So they came last night, dx the problem, gave us a cost, and said they'd be back in the morning to fix it. And they did. So we are now laying next to AC ducts, cooling our core temps back into the normal zone. :)
I've been without AC in the summer plenty of times, since the beach house didn't have it. However, the beach house was made for a cross breeze and this house wasn't. That made it harder even with all the windows open. The main problem I had with this situation was the apparent non-rule following of the HMS employees. I'm thinking not enough people complain about it because 2 different employees did this message thing and "thought" they made appointments. Bizarre.
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