Here's the scenario. Mr. and Mrs. Home Buyer call to schedule an inspection. They were too busy to turn up to meet with the inspector and we only fielded one or two questions from Mr. Buyer. We assumed he read the report. There is now reason to suspect otherwise.
Now that he's moved in to the house (over a month after the inspection was completed) he has some issues. He can't believe that Mark didn't find these things. He doesn't feel that he got his money's worth. (Given that his agent was able to negotiate a lower price based on the inspection report, I'm not sure he's justified in feeling that way but let's move on.) The first thing on his list was the pool light. A quick look at the report showed that the pool light was listed as "not working". Maybe that should have been in all caps. He might have noticed it then. His next complaint involved the pool pump. Apparently the pump did not work when he moved in. Another quick check of the report showed that the pump was reported as "failing". It was overheating on the day of the inspection and Mark indicated that it would fail. Soon. Pictures were included yet Mr. Buyer was surprised that it was missed. When it was pointed out to him that it was not missed and was in the report he just moved on to his next point.
His next point was that there were any number of electrical outlets that don't work. Although he indicated that some of them had worked when he first moved in but stopped working when they had new carpet installed. Apparently the home inspector is a better target than a carpet installer. How on earth is Mark responsible for that?!?
His next issue was bare wires and missing insulation in the attic. Mark reviewed the video tape and these conditions did not exist on the day of the inspection. The most likely explanation is that the previous owners caused a bit of damage while disconnecting their home theatre system, but we're not into blame shifting so we offered to show Mr. Buyer the video tape.
His response? Basically that we could show it to the judge because he was fully prepared to pay the $60 to file a suit against us and that it would be cheaper for us just to give him his money back than to waste time preparing evidence for a court hearing. (Gee, you think he's done this before?) Then he started hinting that he'd be looking for us to reimburse him for every dime he'd spent since he moved into the house.
But sadly, he's right. It took several days just to review the report and the video tape to have a discussion with Mr. Buyer. We have other things to do besides prepare for a day in court, even though I'm relatively certain we'd win. So he's probably going to get his money back - even though I know we didn't miss those things he says we missed. It's just going to be too time consuming to prove it and it generates ill-will.
But it's changed the way we do business. Clients who do not turn up to meet with the inspector will need to schedule a phone "presentation" so we can be assured that they know what is in the report. And future complaints will need to be in writing. We will no longer have these "discussions" on the phone.
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