Longest questionnaire to date!

[hausdok]

Those questions look to me like they came from someone who was scared witless and just didn't know what to ask. If I wasn't feeling too snarky, I might have answered it with something along the lines of: "There's no way I can answer all of those questions in an email. Please call me to discuss your inspection." Then, I'd try to put them at ease on the phone. If you can make a paranoid buyer feel confidence in your skills, you've got a referral source for life. The extra work can often be worth it.

Just sayin.

Finally! One guy here who isn't a wuss.

It's not a question of being a wuss or not; it involves avoiding time wasters.

The only clients I've ever had a problem with over the past 15 years were clients who'd front loaded the inspection with this kind of interrogation. In both instances, I carefully and patiently answered their questions in my usual style. As you can imagine, those answers weren't exactly short. Both times I was ultimately hired and both times those clients ultimately, despite my having been extremely diligent about explaining all of what I do, what I won't do and what they need to do in the event they are unhappy, ignored the terms of our contract and everything I'd explained to them and came to me later demanding remuneration for things that were either completely outside the scope of the inspection or where they had completely ignored what I'd written in the report, allowing the issue to get worse.

In both instances they then failed to meet the most basic requirement of the dispute resolution clause in the contract; to contact me first when they think I've missed something, so that I could have an opportunity to see the issue in person and figure out whether I had in fact missed it and be able to come up with a plan of action to resolve it to our mutual satisfaction. Had they done that, in both cases, they would have learned that the issue was not due to anything that I had done, or failed to do, and they could have made different choices that hadn't left them saddled with bills that they were looking for someone else - namely me - to pay for them.

These people were not respectful of my time before or after the inspection. Time is what I sell. I don't put a dollar value on the report, I put it on my time. When someone wastes my time needlessly - either through hubris or by ignoring the basic conditions of our agreement - they take money out of my pocket and food off my table.

In both of those cases I'd expended a lot of time and energy dealing with what clearly amounted to a money grab. Both of those persons, despite being shown how they'd failed to live up to their end of the contract while I had, have cost me work and will continue to cost me future work by blaming me for things that no inspector, regardless of how good he is, could have seen or predicted, (consequence of an earthquake) or for issues that they were told about and could have had remedied for free prior to closing (rodent damage), but ultimately failed to act upon that grew substantially worse and ultimately cost them.

Questions 6, 7,8,9 and 10 make it patently obvious, at least in my mind, that if anything goes wrong this person's first instinct is going to be to pick up a phone and call a lawyer, not me, and that's the kind of time wasting horse's ass with teeth that I prefer not to do business with.

Just sayin'

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[Jim Katen]

. . . It's not a question of being a wuss or not; it involves avoiding time wasters. . .

My experience has been the exact opposite of yours. Once I get past the initial hurtle, these kinds of clients have never been a problem for me.

I remember one guy about two years ago. He sent me 17 emails *before* the inspection. He covered pretty much everything in Rob's list plus a few more on top. I answered candidly. He behaved perfectly during the inspection, was attentive to everything I said, asked all the right questions and paid my (slightly padded) fee without pause. He called back a month later to schedule another inspection - no more upfront questions. He was equally well behaved at the second inspection. I've since gotten 4 referrals from him.

As I said before, when I look back on the customers who've caused me the most post-inspection trouble over the years, they're the ones who never gave me any clue about it before or during the inspection.

[kurt]

I more or less agree with that.

I've had a few of those.....I usually call them and walk them through the realities of their mostly misguided questions. If they want to listen, I've got them.

If they insist on pushing their agenda, I thank them and invite them to look elsewhere.

[Jim Morrison]

Rob's email struck me as having been written by a scaredy-cat. I work well with scaredy-cats. If it had a pushy, arrogant, or unusally demanding tone, I'd be much more inclined to punt. I like helping the frightened, but who wants to work with a jerk?