Meeting Expectations

The first clue something had gone wrong was the call from the real estate agent. She was looking for the report first thing in the morning even though the client had been told it would be available in the afternoon. Then she asked if the inspector had been with us very long and wondered how many complaints we'd had about him.

I told her that he'd been with us for a good while and that we'd never had any negative comments about him at all. In fact, many of the people he inspected for have phoned in to tell us how wonderful, and detailed he is and to let us know how much they appreciated his easy-to-understand explanations. So I was surprised by her charge that he didn't explain anything to her client and that he'd been rude and argumentative with her client.

This just didn't sound right. We called him to find out what happened. Turns out the agent wasn't even at the inspection. She was basing her charges on information obtained from the client. We also determined that everything seemed to be going well, (at least as far as he could tell) until the client wanted to add something to the work order. His version of the event was that she seemed put-out that he had to call the office first. She thought he should just do it and call the office later. But he was following our procedures, not hers.

We thought it would be a good idea to speak directly with the client. We phoned her and she seemed quite pleasant, but as she talked she seemed to get agitated. By the time she finished, she had insulted the inspector, as well as our back-office staff. And the turning point did seem to be the fact that he called the office to add the additional service she wanted - her point was that "my realtor said he has to do it" so there should have been no need to call the "little office manager". All I can say is that her agent is not well-versed on the Texas Standards of Practice for Inspectors.

But seriously, I believe this is what it came down to - hidden in what was probably intended to be an offhand remark: She thought that since she was buying a half-million dollar property that she would be treated differently than when she bought a $150K property.

I just don't know what else to say.

Hacked!!

I have never been so angry in my life. Fuming. It's probably a good thing we were in Ireland when it happened, the f-bomb is used as just about everything except a preposition and no one takes any particular notice.

We found out about it when one of our schedulers texted me to say that a client advised her that our website had been hacked. She'd checked it out and said it was "creepy". "Creepy" was an understatement. It was beyond creepy. The music was creepy, too.

I believe the hackers wanted me to contact them - based on the words "Contact Me" that scrolled intermittently across the page. Really no chance of that. I wasn't about to click on any link they had there. I felt that to do so would have been inviting even more trouble. I also assumed they wanted me to pay them because they were so clever that they were able to hack in. They were also clever enough to destroy the backups so that we were not easily able to get our site back up and running. Did I say "not easily able"? It was totally wrecked and impossible to restore.

We found the web hosting provider completely useless. Apparently the hackers managed to change our security information so that when we phoned in for support, we were unable to prove we were the rightful owners of the domain and the hosting company refused to speak with us, other than to tell Mark that he didn't actually know the name of his first dog. But what did I expect? Their call center, (like so many others) is in the Philippines. They can barely understand you, much less your problem. All they would have had to do is look at the site to realize that there was a problem. Let's just say that I don't expect them to process any additional credit card charges.

We were able to open a site with a new hosting provider - hopefully one that is more secure. And here's what those hackers don't understand - I am more willing to pay someone a thousand dollars to do an honest job rebuilding the site than I am to pay them ten cents because they are dishonest thieves.

And make no mistake - they are thieves. They may not have taken any money from me directly but they stole my time, my resources, and my peace. But we WILL rebuild.