After being a gold home warranty holder for a few years I think it's time for a solid, honest, A.B. May review.
The first thing you should know is that back in the day when A.B. May was started it was a family run business and had an impressive reputation here in the community. If you asked your friends who to call if you had any household issue, you can bet that AB May would be amongst the names of trustworthy companies out there to get the job done here in KC. I'm not sure when the ownership changed hands, but it's no longer owned locally and I've noticed some changes. Below I'll outline the good and the not so great.
The good:
* The employees: Over the course of the past eight years and two different homes, I've had countless AB May folks over to inspect heaters, plumbing, AC, and appliances. I can say with confidence that they all are in general kind and thoughtful people. They give good advice, and seem to do good work.
* The work: It's hard to know for sure since I'm not a contractor, but it seems to me that when AB May comes out they do a stand up job. I haven't ever had anything break right after a fix, and I do find them to be trustworthy.
The not so great:
* I think my biggest grievance has been the cost. AB May has become EXPENSIVE over the past few years. I do think there is something to you get what you pay for, but I find their cost overall to be exorbitant. I know costs are going up, but I feel as if I get profiled for living in a nicer neighborhood, and if you don't lock in a price with them immediately they always try to charge you more. We recently went with another company to do our HVAC and it was more than half the cost of AB May's quote.
* I think they instruct their employees to always, no matter what, try and replace or upsell you on something: Literally at every single system check it's the same thing "oh, you really need to replace xyz, want me to call a sales rep for you? If you book with me today you can save xxx but if you don't it could run you like 5k, but don't worry we can finance..." When I have someone out for a system check, I don't want to hear every single time that my house is going to break. I want to know if the HVAC is safe and operational. I don't want a hard sell on things. It honestly got to the point where I was really tired of hearing it this contributed to us cancelling our gold home insurance policy with them.
* Their service plans don't offer much real value and they are hard to cancel: It used to be that with an annual plan through them you got a lot of benefit. Now, it seems even though I was paying them $70 per mo (I know, it's embarrassing!) they would still charge me for just about anything with very little to do discount. They'd be like oh, well we can absorb consultation fee if you get it fixed, and I'd be like well aren't I paying you money each month so I don't have to pay for you to come out? the value really went away for us quickly, and then there is the challenge of cancelling. There is no way to cancel on their website. So, you have to take time out of your day to call them to cancel. The woman on the phone was great (again they have pretty good employees), but it took me way too long to cancel and they managed to get even more money from me in the process.
Overall: I think AB May is reliable and can be trusted but you will pay for it. I also think that all of their service plans are a racket and that if you have the time and energy to find a hyper local person you trust that can do the work you might end up saving tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of your home ownership.
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