AUBURN — Gary Haskell said he thought the official-looking letter — a pitch for waterline insurance — was a scam the instant he opened the envelope. But what if he hadn’t?
“There are people out there that don’t know any better,” Haskell of 193 Garfield Road said. “They look at something like this and just write a check.”
The letter and a neat brochure warned Haskell that he and other Auburn homeowners would not be covered if they had waterline problems between the city’s equipment and his house, that “… the water service line on your property could fail without warning, leaving you responsible for the cost of repair.”
That could run him thousands of dollars, it warned. For $5.49 a month, the folks at HomeServe could make it all go away.
“It’s a scam,” he said. “Of course it is. Isn’t it?”
John Storer, superintendent of the Auburn Water and Sewer districts, said the letters are not from the city. Several Auburn residents have contacted his office asking about the letters in the past weeks, wondering if it’s something they should be worried about.
Not necessarily, he said.
It’s true that customers are responsible for repairs to their equipment and that includes the waterlines under their lawns and on their property, Storer said. It’s also true those repairs can be costly.
So the letter from Norwalk, Conn.-based HomeServe is not a scam. But Storer said those kinds of problems are rare, at least in Auburn.
“We are certainly not endorsing it,” Storer said. “It has nothing to do with us, but I guess there is a market out there for people.”
Myles Meehan, senior vice president for HomeServe, confirmed the company recently began marketing to Auburn residents. The company has operated in Portland and other locations throughout New England for years.
“We are a provider of emergency home repairs service plan,” he said. “It’s not a warranty. These are individual service plans for different systems that serve your house or are in your house.”
The company doesn’t insure just domestic waterlines, but sewer lines and interior plumbing, too.
“We also have plans for sewer lines and plumbing systems in the house, electrical systems, heating, air conditioning, water heaters and similar (systems),” he said. “We believe we give the consumers the opportunity to purchase individual plans for things they are concerned about or things that cost a lot of money.”
The offer spelled out in the letters to Auburn residents would cost $4.49 per month, or a total of $65.88 per year.
In exchange, the company provides a $6,000 benefit annually. That could cover something simple such as a $418 repair to a leaking line or a major waterline replacement.
“If you are a homeowner, this is really something you ought to consider,” he said. “It’s sort of a gap insurance that covers the stuff in between what the utility covers — the mains out in the road — and what your homeowners insurance covers.”
Waterline or sewer line damage is not necessarily covered by most homeowner policies, either. Area insurance brokers said it depends on the policy and provider, but most standard policies do not cover plumbing inside or outside the house.
“You could put in the claim and depending on the company and the adjuster, there could be some coverage,” Stephen Nagy of Lewiston’s Champoux Insurance said. “It is something that consumers should investigate, talking to their company.”
A homeowner policy would have a deductible, too, Meehan said. They’d have to pay the first portion of the bill, be it $200 or $2,000. HomeServe’s program is a benefit, paying the first $6,000 of repairs.
“Homeowners insurance doesn’t facilitate the work, either,” he said. “We provide both the pavement and the repairs using quality local contractors.”
Storer said he thinks there have been one or two instances per year of Auburn customers with waterline problems, and most have been relatively small.
“If we have three a year, that would probably be a high number,” Storer said. “We just have not seen a huge amount of this.”
Sewer lines are a bigger problem, Storer said. Household sewer lines tend to be nested, leaving spaces between segments where tree roots can grow.
“We might get maybe 25 calls per year, for plugging calls for sewer,” he said. “One or two might be an actual broken or deteriorated service. But a lot of times that just takes a call to a rooter company.”
Meehan said the company does have a policy for that, which offers $6,000 in coverage for $9.99 per month. That covers everything from big repairs to roto-rooter service.
Storer said sewer line problems are more common, but they are still rare in Auburn.
“You hear about policies for everything now,” Storer said. “If you have an older car, you can buy a policy to repair the engine or the transmission. If it is something that concerns you, you should look into it. I tend to be pretty fiscally conservative, so I would have some concerns about something like this.”
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