The Refrigerator Fiasco

I wrote earlier about our "refrigerator adventure"... late morning today it tried to turn into a "refrigerator fiasco"!

In my previous post I mentioned how we'd find out today how much of the cost of the new fridge would be reimbursed by our home warranty company.  When Bill talked to them last night, after hearing from the repairman what the approximate parts and labor cost would be to fix it, the home warranty company said it was very likely they'd give us replacement cost.  So today when Bill talks to them, they said they had 2 options for us, but neither would be a new fridge!

The first option would be to have their repair person (a) come out and diagnose it tomorrow, (b) order the necessary part(s) on Monday, (c) receive the parts sometime (they won't pay for rush shipping), and (d) come fix it either next week Friday or the following week.  They apparently think we can go at least a week without a fridge!  I don't know anyone who could do that, it's not like we have a backup fridge sitting around.  They said they can't take the word of the person we had out last night.  The reason Bill didn't call their person in the first place is because that's who his mom dealt with when trying to get her 2-month-old washing machine taken care of through home warranty; 3 months later she finally got hers replaced.  This person only comes to northwest Ohio one day a week, and per prior experience we're definitely less than thrilled with the way they handle things.

The second option is to cash out, which essentially means they give us the money to get the fridge fixed.  According to the repair person last night, we're looking at $400 in labor just for one part, not to mention the cost of the parts themselves and the rest of the labor involved.  So what did the warranty company offer us?  $350 total!  Bill argued that not only is that way below what the repair person last night quoted, but it's also barely enough for the cheapest fridge we could possibly find that would be very tiny and significantly below what we had previously.

After significant time spent talking to many people in the home warranty company, their final offer was to give us $450 cash, which is not quite half of what our fridge cost - and it's not a top of the line fridge by any means.  Now I'm seriously wishing we had gotten a cheaper fridge last night, but when we're told that it'll be essentially paid for by the home warranty, we assumed that was what they meant.  Gotta love unexpected huge costs due to a nearly-new appliance dying!  Kinda makes me wonder why we're bothering to keep the home warranty policy, you know?  But we do live in an old enough house that it could be worthwhile.

Needless to say I'm pretty ticked about this whole situation, but I don't know that there's any more we can do except figure out how to pay for the other $550 of the fridge cost.