Get Gephardt helps homeowner with insurance claim denied for not enough sewer backups

SALT LAKE CITY – Carol Edison’s frustration all began with a clogged toilet. It took the plumbers just minutes to fix, and Edison happened to catch them on a slow day.

“’We don’t have anything to do. We could give you a free scope of your sewer line because your house is pretty old,’” she says the crew told her.

Edison’s house is 112 years old. So, she thought, why not? And sure enough, when the scope’s camera reached where her line connects with the main sewer under the street, the plumbing crew found trouble. Big time.

“It was totally broken,” Edison said. “And the sewage was going everywhere into the roadbed but not into the sewer line.”

The cost to dig up the road and repair the line? More than $33,000.

“That’s a ton of money,” she said. “That’s more than half of what it cost us to buy this house when we bought it.”

No backup? No payout!

Ten years back, Edison bought a repair plan from a home warranty company, HomeServe USA, for this very reason. The policy says she’ll get reimbursed up to $10,000 for a leaking line that takes wastewater from her home. But when she called HomeServe, they said she would not get a dime until that wastewater floods her home. Not once or twice, but three times.

“They want the sewage to back up three times before they will do anything,” Edison said.

Anything less than three backups, she was told, is preventative and not covered.

“Of course, there would be no backup because there’s nothing plugging it to cause sewage to stay in the house. It’s just running into the road,” she said.

Despite all her calls, emails, documentation and videos, she says her claim was denied, so she decided to call the KSL Investigators.

We reached out to HomeServe on Edison’s behalf – not through the customer service line but through the company’s communications team. We asked if her coverage really requires three back-ups because we couldn’t find any mention of that here in her policy. We didn’t receive an answer to that particular question, but we did get some good news for Edison.

HomeServe wrote us that “…after gaining more information from her as well as researching” their records, they “will reimburse her $10,000.”

This is not the first time HomeServe has been in the local news. Back in 2014, KSL reported on the company after Salt Lake residents received official-looking warnings that they’re responsible for their home’s sewer line repairs. Those letters turned out to be HomeServe’s pitch for their repair plan, in partnership with the city. And it hooked Edison.

“So, we’ve had that since then,” she said.

Do you need sewer line protection?

But just because the city endorses a sewer line repair plan, is it worth your money?

That’s the question we took to Bill Penton, owner of Penton Insurance Agency. He says people with older homes should have some sort of sewer line coverage – especially for homes dating back to the early 20th century.

“The terracotta pipes, the cast iron pipes – they crumble,” Penton said. “They will eventually fail.”

While a standard homeowners insurance policy won’t offer coverage, you can buy sewer line coverage as an add-on.

“It’s an option an agent can put on the policy or not put on the policy,” Penton said.

A cheaper solution

And it’s an option you can likely add to your policy at a lower price compared to the cost of a warranty repair plan.

Currently, HomeServe USA offers its Exterior Sewer Line plan in Edison’s neighborhood at $13.99 a month – just shy of $168 a year. But, through her homeowner’s insurance, she could get the same coverage through a service line rider for $66 per year. That’s 39% of the repair plan’s cost.

While Edison is glad to have finally gotten reimbursed from HomeServe without those backups, Edison says she wishes she had known about the sewer line insurance coverage a decade back.

She says she’s now made the switch to her home insurance company for sewer line coverage.

“So, I just did that because ours is about to renew,” she said.

In their statement to the KSL Investigators, HomeServe said Edison’s claim should not have been denied and that the employees involved in her case will be coached “to avoid such a situation from happening in the future.”