SALT LAKE CITY – Carol Edison’s frustration began with a clogged toilet. It took the plumbers just a few minutes to fix it, and Edison happened to catch them on a quiet day.
“‘We have nothing to do. We could offer you a free inspection of your sewer line because your house is quite old,'” the team told her.
Edison’s house is 112 years old. So, she thought, why not? And sure enough, when the scope’s camera reached the spot where her line connects to the main sewer under the street, the plumbing crew encountered a major problem.
“It was completely broken,” Edison said. “And the sewage was flowing everywhere into the pavement, but not into the sewer system.”
The cost of ripping up the road and repairing the line is more than $33,000.
“That’s a lot of money,” she said. “It’s more than half of what it cost us to buy this house back then.”
No backup? No payout!
That’s exactly why Edison signed up for a repair plan 10 years ago with HomeServe USA, a home warranty company. The policy says she’ll be reimbursed up to $10,000 for a leaky sewer line in her home. But when she called HomeServe, she was told she wouldn’t get a penny until sewage flooded her house. And not once or twice, but three times.
“They want the sewage to flow back three times before they do anything,” Edison said.
Anything less than three backups, she was told, was preventative and not covered.
Homeowner Carol Edison shows KSL’s Matt Gephardt the policy for the service plan she purchased for her sewer line. (Stuart Johnson, KSL TV)
“Of course there would be no backup because there are no blockages that could cause the sewage to stay in the house. It just runs out into the street,” she said.
Despite all her calls, emails, documents and videos, her claim was denied, so she decided to call the KSL investigators.
We reached out to HomeServe on behalf of Edison – not through their customer service line, but through the company’s communications team. We asked if their insurance coverage really requires three backups, as we couldn’t find any mention of it here in their policy. We didn’t get an answer to that specific question, but we did get some good news for Edison.
Homeowners Carole Edison and Ann Garret show Matt Gephardt where workers had to cut open the street to get to where their damaged sewer line met the main line. (Stuart Johnson, KSL TV)
HomeServe wrote to us that they will “reimburse her $10,000 after receiving additional information from her and reviewing her records.”
This isn’t the first time HomeServe has made local news. KSL reported on the company back in 2014 after Salt Lake City residents received official-looking warnings that they were responsible for repairing their homes’ sewer lines. Those letters turned out to be HomeServe’s pitch for its repair plan in partnership with the city. And Edison was won over.
“So that’s what we’ve had ever since,” she said.
Do you need sewer line protection?
But is it worth your money just because the city endorses a sewer repair plan?
We put that question to Bill Penton, owner of Penton Insurance Agency, who believes owners of older homes should have some sort of sewer line coverage, especially those built in the early 20th century.
“The terracotta pipes, the cast iron pipes – they crumble,” Penton said. “They will eventually fail.”
Bill Penton of Penton Insurance Agency said homeowners may be able to purchase optional sewer line insurance through their insurance company at significantly lower rates than those typically offered by warranty companies. (Meghan Thackrey, KSL TV)
Although a normal building insurance does not offer any insurance cover, you can also take out sewage insurance.
“It’s an option that an agent can include in the policy or not,” Penton said.
A cheaper solution
And it’s an option you can probably add to your policy for less than the cost of a warranty repair plan.
Currently, HomeServe USA offers its outside duct plan in Edison’s neighborhood for $13.99 a month — just under $168 a year. However, through her home insurance, she could get the same coverage with a service line supplemental insurance policy for $66 a year. That’s 39% of the cost of the repair plan.
Although Edison is happy that she was finally compensated by HomeServe without those reserves, she wishes she had known about sewer line insurance ten years ago.
She says she has now taken out sewer insurance with her home contents insurance.
“So I only did this because ours needs to be replaced soon,” she said.
In its statement to KSL investigators, HomeServe said Edison’s claim should not have been denied and that employees involved in her case would be trained “to avoid such a situation in the future.”
