St. Albans residents who get offers to buy water line insurance in the mail are being warned that such offers may be misleading, according to town officials.

On Tuesday, two residents reported getting letters in the mail saying that they are responsible for water line service on their property, according to Town Manager Rhonda Stark.

However, residents of the town are not served by municipal water lines, but rely on wells for their water.

“I’m afraid that the elderly or other residents will get sucked in,” said Stark, who said she also got the notice at her home in Canaan. “It reads like there is a benefit to get if you pay and I’m just concerned that someone will actually end up paying for it.”

HomeServe USA Repair Management Corp., the company that sent the letters, is based in Connecticut and sells repair plans and insurance for plumbing, electrical and heating and cooling systems. Its clients include the Portland Water District, which has used the company to sell water line insurance since 2006.

But HomeServe has been cited in three states — Kentucky, Ohio and Massachusetts — for deceptive advertising and in 2011 was ordered to pay $75,000 to a consumer aid fund in Massachusetts to address allegations of unfair and deceptive advertising.

Residents of St. Albans and nearby Canaan, where town officials also received a complaint about a letter from HomeServe on Tuesday, don’t have water lines; but the letter assumes otherwise.

“Your water company is responsible for installing, and continuing to maintain, the water main in your street. Your water line branches off the water main and is your responsibility,” the letter states, going on to say that if the line were to break, homeowners could face thousands of dollars in unforeseen expenses. It does state that the insurance is optional.

The company says that it has made changes to its advertising since the action by the attorney general in Massachusetts and that it has no way of knowing whether customers get water from a well or through a public water line.

“We are hardly a fraud,” said Myles Meehan, a spokesman for HomeServe. “These are optional coverages. If it’s not applicable to you as a homeowner, you can toss it in the trash.”

The letter sent to St. Albans residents is personalized with a heading that reads “curb valve to home foundation responsibility” and inserts the homeowner’s name. The heading also asks recipients to respond within 30 days.

The first paragraph of the letter states, “Saint Albans homeowners may not be aware that they are responsible for the water service line on their property.”

The company sells its insurance nationwide and claims 8,000 established customers in southern Maine. HomeServe is trying to expand in other parts of the state, Meehan said.

State and regional officials said recipients of the letters might not be aware that their homeowner insurance might cover water line breaks or that, in some cases, insurance might be available through the municipality.

The Office of the Maine Attorney General has received five inquiries about the letters recently, said Tim Feeley, a spokesman for the office.

“This kind of falls under the category of buyer beware. It’s technically not illegal to offer this, but it’s probably something that people want to scrutinize and think long and hard about whether they need water line insurance,” Feeley said.

A few months ago, officials at the Kennebec Water District, which serves Waterville, Winslow, Fairfield, Benton and Vassalboro, got reports of a similar offer for water line insurance through a different company being circulated via the mail in Waterville and Winslow.

The district does not offer insurance and there is no requirement for homeowners to have water line insurance, according to Jeffrey LaCase, general manager for the district.

Augusta residents also reported having received letters from the company this week. Also, in Portsmouth, N.H., just south of the Maine border, about a half dozen inquiries about letters from HomeServe have surfaced in the last week, according to Brian Goetz, deputy director of the Portsmouth Department of Public Works.

“It’s real official-looking, so I think people assume it is coming from us,” Goetz said. “It caught us unaware, because there certainly are people that buy this sort of thing; but because we had no prior notice that they would be contacting our customers, we had to say it was something we don’t endorse.”

In some areas, such as the Portland Water District, the company contracts with cities to provide insurance to water line customers. Although water line breaks on private property are rare, insurance was a service that the district wanted to be able to offer its customers, said Michelle Clements, a spokeswoman for the district, which serves 11 communities in southern Maine.

Some confusion has arisen because the district has allowed the company to reprint its logo on letters, generating concern about legitimacy, Clements said.

“I think they have different models, where sometimes I guess they go into markets without that partnership, which I could see causing some confusion,” Clements said.

HomeServe has been accredited with the Better Business Bureau since February. The group gives the company a grade of A- and states that the agency has received 314 complaints about the company in the last three years.

“People should think long and hard before sending someone money in a transaction that you haven’t initiated or a solicitation that just comes in the mail out of the blue,” Feeley said. “These are always things we recommend that people think twice about.”

Rachel Ohm — 612-2368

rohm@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @rachel_ohm