Exterior Water Service Line Coverage
$7.95/mo
$23.85/qtr
$95.40/yr
After 40 years in the extermination business, Vincent L. knew good customer service.
And when he found himself with a basement full of water while his 88-year-old mother was ill, Vincent needed customer service.
"I went into the basement, and it was full of water," he said. "I tried to clear the drain, but I couldn’t."
If a basement full of water wasn’t stressful enough, Vincent’s mother was scheduled to have surgery as well.
"It was rough, was what it was," he said.
It turned out that the water in Vincent’s basement was because of an issue in his neighbor’s home. After his neighbor hired a plumber to address it, the water in Vincent’s basement drained.
For a few days, anyway.
"A couple days later, there was water in my basement again, but it was not the same problem," he said.
Vincent had some help, however – he had enrolled in several of HomeServe’s emergency home repair plans, including water service line, sewer service line and interior plumbing and drainage, through the City of Reading, Pennsylvania's program with HomeServe’s Service Line Warranties of America. Despite the busy holiday season, HomeServe’s customer experience agents hustled to dispatch a contractor to assess the problem in Vincent’s basement.
“I’m retired from the service business and it’s harder now to get people out to your home, and that’s all I was thinking about, but HomeServe did everything they possibly could,” he said. “I’m pretty skeptical, but I could see that they really cared.”
"I could see that whoever I spoke to was really trying to get someone out here," he said, noting that his problem cropped up on a holiday weekend.
His interior drain line was leaking so that everything he put down the drain bubbled back up in his basement. With his mother’s health issues, this just wasn’t something he could wait to address. Vincent was employing a shop vacuum in the battle, but he was losing. "The operations center was excellent, I felt like they were really concerned about my situation," he said. "I’ve been in the customer service business for 40 years – I ran an extermination company – and I could tell that (the customer experience agents) really cared."
Quinns Plumbing, Heating and Cooling was dispatched to replace 50 feet of pipe beneath Vincent’s home, and he saved $2,316 on the repair.
“I’m retired from the service business and it’s harder now to get people out to your home, and that’s all I was thinking about, but HomeServe did everything they possibly could,” he said. “I’m pretty skeptical, but I could see that they really cared.”
Published Mar 2, 2023