To watch a video version of this podcast, click here:
https://youtu.be/NZSMT78oKmQ
In this episode, Reuben Saltzman, Tessa Murry, and Eric Houseman delve into the craziest service inquiries and complaints home inspectors face, emphasizing the importance of communication, empathy, and proper process. They share real stories, lessons learned, and strategies to handle difficult situations effectively.
Takeaways
Most customer complaints come from miscommunication and unclear expectations.
Set clear expectations before, during, and after the inspection.
Listen first and fully understand the client’s concern before responding.
Show empathy and remain professional when handling complaints.
Follow a consistent process for resolving service inquiries.
Gather all facts before making conclusions or offering solutions.
Track and analyze service inquiries to identify recurring issues.
Use complaint trends to improve processes and team training.
New construction homes can still have defects and require thorough inspections.
Educate clients on the value and limitations of home inspections.
Keep detailed documentation, including notes, photos, and communication records.
Clear documentation helps resolve disputes and protects the business.
Be responsive and follow up with clients to build trust.
Maintain professionalism when dealing with unpaid clients and report access.
Establish and communicate clear payment policies.
Build strong relationships with both clients and real estate agents.
Focus on factual, objective findings rather than assigning blame.
View complaints as opportunities for learning and continuous improvement.
Strong communication, empathy, and consistency lead to better customer satisfaction.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Personal Updates
02:15 Understanding Service Inquiries
06:49 The Process of Handling Complaints
11:39 Trends in New Construction Complaints
15:39 Tracking Service Inquiries
21:16 Customer Service Philosophy
24:29 The Importance of Showing Up
28:25 Navigating Client Relationships
30:42 Handling Service Inquiries
35:57 Learning from Inspection Experiences
44:19 The Role of Agents in Home Inspections
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is an AI-generated transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is mostly accurate, it will contain some errors due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Reuben Saltzman: Welcome to my house. Welcome to the Structure Talk podcast, a production of Structure Tech Home Inspections. My name is Reuben Saltzman. I’m your host alongside building science geek, Tessa Murry. We help home inspectors up their game through education, and we help homeowners to be better stewards of their houses. We’ve been keeping it real on this podcast since 2019, and we are also the number one home inspection podcast in the world, according to my mom.
Reuben (00:01.099)
Welcome back to the show. It is a lovely day here in Minnesota. Tessa, is it a lovely day in Florida too?
Tessa Murry (00:09.486)
I don’t even know Ruben, I don’t go outside anymore.
Reuben (00:11.663)
It’s too hot. It’s too humid. Okay. Okay. All right. And how are you feeling?
Tessa Murry (00:14.702)
Yeah, you got it. You got it. Yeah. You know, tomorrow marks a special day. It’s the third trimester officially. And so that’s exciting. Definitely have a grow growing belly and and also getting over a like a some sort of virus head cold. So I’m hanging in there, hanging in there.
Reuben (00:38.195)
well, and I was and we got we got Eric Houseman, repeat guest coming on the show. Eric is a service manager here at Structure Tech. And I was just Eric, I was just telling Tessa before the show, sh sharing some great maternity advice. I’ve heard that third trimester is the easiest. It gets super easy, you feel light, carefree, you sleep great, it’s all those things.
you’ve heard the same, surely, right, Eric? Yeah.
Eric Houseman (01:09.046)
Yes, every female in my life that has ever been with child has said that the last trimester is a breeze. Yeah.
Reuben (01:17.037)
Yeah. Yeah. Of course, Eric, if you don’t know us, we’re talking a little tongue in cheek. Haven’t exactly heard that. Yeah. but Eric, welcome to the show. Great to have you on again.
Tessa Murry (01:17.398)
What’s wrong with me then? Man.
Eric Houseman (01:25.56)
Facetiousness. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (01:25.976)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (01:30.858)
Welcome, Eric. Good to have you back.
Eric Houseman (01:32.088)
Thanks. Thanks for having me back. B the the listeners are are gonna get sick of hearing from me at some point in time, but you know.
Reuben (01:39.887)
Tessa Murry (01:39.958)
Well, today we have a fun we have a fun topic, I think, right? What are we gonna be discussing today?
Reuben (01:45.688)
Yeah, I I teased this on the last show and I said, next week, blah, blah, blah. And then it’s like, wait, we’re all busy. We’re all busy. We’re all busy. And that was like a month ago now. So it’s not it wasn’t exactly next week, but I should have said on the next podcast. that that would have been accurate. We we t so we teased it on the last show. We’re gonna talk about some of the craziest, you know, I I guess you you could call it a complaint, but we like to use euphemisms here.
Tessa Murry (02:01.432)
There we go.
Reuben (02:15.437)
We don’t we don’t have customer complaints ever, do we, Eric? What do we have?
Tessa Murry (02:15.85)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Houseman (02:19.222)
Nope. We have service inquiries.
Reuben (02:22.905)
Service inquiries. That’s what we call them. Yeah. we’ll talk about some of the craziest service inquiries, because you know, if i we don’t get a lot of them, but when people aren’t happy with their inspection, sometimes it’s unrealistic expectations. Sometimes we do miss stuff. I mean, we are human, we’re not perfect. but if if we don’t do a perfect inspection, people usually like to let us know about it.
Tessa Murry (02:24.64)
huh.
Eric Houseman (02:25.667)
Yes.
Reuben (02:50.927)
And Eric is the first person to take care of that stuff. Well, he’s usually the first hand the last. Eric the the buck stops with Eric. he he handles that stuff. Yeah. It’s it’s pretty rare that I hear about anything.
Tessa Murry (02:56.939)
Yeah.
Eric Houseman (03:00.194)
Hopefully.
Tessa Murry (03:02.638)
You know
Tessa Murry (03:06.05)
Just curious, you know, I I I know that there are people with unrealistic expectations in this day and age, but also I’m just cu and we are human and you know, inspectors miss things, but how many of the how many of these complaints would you say, Eric, are just due to like a miscommunication or people just like not not understanding correctly?
Eric Houseman (03:26.83)
somewhere in the realm of eighty to ninety percent.
Tessa Murry (03:31.714)
Really? Okay. Okay.
Eric Houseman (03:33.357)
Yeah. I and that’s just like off the top of my head, like without doing actual research, but whether it boils down to you know expectations, whether it’s you know, expectations about what an inspector does or does not do, expectations about like is this some type of warranty or guarantee? a lot of those things. I would say it’s in the realm of 80 to 90 percent.
Tessa Murry (03:49.539)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (03:54.53)
Mm.
Tessa Murry (04:00.782)
So a lot of it you think could be resolved with just more communication or different communication than what happened during the inspection. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (04:07.382)
Yeah. Yeah. I I mean a a really good example of that that any home inspector can associate with is they go out, they do an inspection, you’ve got a X number year old furnace, right? Works fine on the day of the inspection. Six months later, client calls back and says, My furnace crapped out on me. And all of a sudden there’s this unrealistic expectation that
Tessa Murry (04:28.834)
Mm.
Eric Houseman (04:34.582)
because of the fact that it worked okay on the day of the inspection, that it’s supposed to work for an undetermined amount of time thereafter. Well yeah.
Reuben (04:42.007)
At least a year. I should expect to have it work at least a year. I mean you just inspected it six months ago, right? Yeah.
Tessa Murry (04:42.702)
Mm-hmm. Okay.
Eric Houseman (04:48.236)
Yes. Or or there’s the other like, Did did you even look at this? And it’s like, Yes, we did. And it’s documented in the report. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (04:48.684)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (04:53.794)
Yeah.
Reuben (04:57.229)
Yeah, but then but then so often, so often you get the contractor who comes back out and what do they do? this isn’t up to code. This this condensate drain line is only a half inch. This is illegal. Your home inspector didn’t tell you about this. I mean, this is illegal. You you can’t do this. It’s like, and then everything is our fault.
Tessa Murry (04:57.281)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (05:20.207)
Eric Houseman (05:23.244)
Yes. And and that’s the thing that made the twenty five year old furnace fail. Is it the the improper size condensate drain line.
Tessa Murry (05:28.416)
Right.
Reuben (05:33.313)
And and you know, I’m I’m I’m just bringing that up because that has literally happened to us. Where, you know, we get the complaint that a condensate line that’s been there forever is like it doesn’t meet today’s standard. It’s worked fine for twenty years. This is not a code compliance inspection, but it it it it all goes to communication.
Tessa Murry (05:33.431)
Yeah.
Eric Houseman (05:41.28)
yeah.
Tessa Murry (05:53.135)
Well and I’m assuming that’s a a client Yeah. Well and I’m assuming that’s a client who also wants Structure Tech to pay for their new furnace because they missed the condensate line issue. Or something to that effect. I mean
Reuben (06:04.173)
Yeah, I don’t know.
They want something, they want their pound of flesh, right? Yeah.
Tessa Murry (06:10.796)
I guess.
Eric Houseman (06:13.194)
It a a lot of what it boils down to is, you know, you you were the last ones there. You were the last ones that touched it, so it’s your fault that that this failed, or that it wasn’t clear.
Reuben (06:22.701)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Last man in syndrome. So, but today I thought it’d be fun to talk about some some of the crazier complaints. But y you know what, Eric, I I don’t know. Maybe we’re not prepared for this, but I just thought while we’re on this topic, and while it’s still fresh in your mind from a recent presentation you did.
Tessa Murry (06:24.258)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Eric Houseman (06:29.133)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (06:29.537)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben (06:51.349)
What if we were to just kind of go over the process? Like what do we do if someone calls up with a service inquiry? Would you would you want to talk about that today? Or am I am I going too off script? Should we do that another day?
Eric Houseman (07:03.79)
Well I I mean I can I can talk about that very easily. you know, it’s something that when I took this job over geez, what was it? I mean like six, six and a half years ago. it’s something that you know, we really didn’t have documented within the company was how to handle this stuff. We didn’t really do a great job of tracking these to look at
Reuben (07:17.956)
Yeah.
Reuben (07:32.557)
No. No.
Eric Houseman (07:33.325)
trends to look at you know is is there an era of home is there a you know a typical time frame that these come up is it you know vacant houses occupied houses at a particular inspector all all of those things and i’ve i’ve spent a a good deal of time getting it to the point where it is now where you know kind of the hope is is that if we we talk all the time as a leadership team where it’s like if you get hit by a bus tomorrow could somebody
Tessa Murry (07:34.158)
Mm.
Eric Houseman (08:02.616)
Pick up the torch and just take it from you without being trained on how to do it. and I think the answer to that question is is you know, do I have the tools in place so that somebody could do that? Yes. However, what you what you really can’t teach someone is the actual interpersonal soft skills of talking to someone and being empathetic and really trying to see.
both sides of the situation and try and determine it is this a 1% situation where I just need to deal with this and I need to make it go away and I don’t really need to bring this to the team. We don’t need to make broad sweeping changes. Or is this something where the team could benefit or the company could benefit from a minor change in process and procedure so that we don’t have this happen again.
Reuben (08:59.277)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (09:00.054)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Interesting. You know, I was kind of curious when you were saying that you were creating some spreadsheets to track some of these things. Have you seen any patterns emerge for like a type of house where you get the callbacks or type of client? Or is it is it like it the data shows you, it’s these inspectors that get more callbacks? Like what have you learned from since you’ve been tracking this data?
Eric Houseman (09:22.986)
I I wish I could say that I’ve learned something you know that’s actually really, really useful. The only thing that I can say, like concretely without diving in super deep, that we’ve learned probably over the last couple of years is that there has definitely been an increase, substantial increase in the number of service inquiries that we’ve gotten or that we’ve received on.
New construction homes. so taking diving into the data, right? Like I brought this to Ruben’s attention a couple of weeks ago. We pulled some more data to kind of confirm because Ruben’s argument was like, well, have we started doing more new construction and spent inspections as a percentage of our business, or has it held flat? so I dove in even more and our new construction.
Tessa Murry (10:12.718)
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (10:19.47)
percentage to total has not really fluctuated over the last five years to six years worth of data that I have. However, last year twenty yeah.
Reuben (10:29.059)
And let me pause real quick. Do you have an idea what that is off the top of your head? I’m just curious. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (10:34.604)
What the percentage is. Yeah, it’s somewhere between ten point nine five percent and twelve point five five percent.
Reuben (10:43.266)
That’s the best you can do.
Tessa Murry (10:43.756)
The inspecti total inspections. Okay. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (10:45.322)
Yeah, that’s the best I can do. Yes. Yes. And the only reason I know that is because it’s literally sitting on my computer screen in front of me right now. it hasn’t fluctuated much. Yes. Yeah. And that’s the data that I’m taking there is saying in this particular calendar year, it would be an inspection that’s done in of a build of that calendar year or the year prior.
Reuben (10:48.172)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (10:49.112)
That is not precise enough.
Reuben (10:53.357)
Okay.
Tessa Murry (10:53.614)
All right, so one out of every ten inspections that structure tech does is new construction. Okay.
Reuben (10:59.887)
Okay.
Eric Houseman (11:15.288)
So that that’s the best way I can break the data down. but looking at the data of service inquiries, it’s been last year, 2025, was a from a percentage standpoint, because percentages are what matter, the percentage of service inquiries to total inspections on new construction homes more than tripled over any previous year. And now this year.
Reuben (11:15.363)
Sure. Yeah. Got it.
Tessa Murry (11:44.11)
Well.
Eric Houseman (11:45.332)
It has nearly tripled again over last year. So we went from like
Tessa Murry (11:48.26)
my goodness. Why? Well, I’m sure we’re gonna get into this, but why?
Eric Houseman (11:54.581)
Yeah. I think that there’s a lot of reasons. I mean, we can go back to the most recent podcast that we did about AI, and I think that there’s sort unrealistic expectations that are being planted in people’s heads about AI. another speculation that I have is I and I don’t have any data to back this, but I think that it is far more commonplace now for
Reuben (12:04.003)
Yep, I was thinking about that.
Tessa Murry (12:04.993)
I mean
Eric Houseman (12:23.198)
A buyer of a new construction home to represent themselves rather than be represented by a real estate agent. So they may not know the intricacies of dealing with new construction. I think that buyers are I think that they’ve seen horror stories on social media about new construction homes. not just here, but throughout the country.
Tessa Murry (12:28.003)
Hm.
Tessa Murry (12:47.064)
Mm.
Reuben (12:48.355)
Dude, Eric. my gosh, that just hit me. Even my daughter, she’s 15, Lucy, like, she’ll send me reels or whatever they are, the vertical videos of other home inspectors pointing out new construction defects. And half of these are fake. It’s like this clearly isn’t even new construction. But half of the stuff she’s showing me too is cosmetic.
Eric Houseman (13:04.59)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben (13:16.493)
It’s like it’s stuff that we wouldn’t even talk about. But then you see there’s other home inspectors who are taking videos and they’re like, this is new construction, they’re being super critical and all of it. And then it makes the public think this is what home inspectors do. They look for imperfections in floor finishes and walls and ceilings and all this cosmetic stuff. Dude. All right. I all right. This is like a light bulb moment for me just talking through it, Eric.
Tessa Murry (13:16.723)
huh.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (13:25.9)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (13:32.513)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (13:41.942)
Yeah.
Eric Houseman (13:42.754)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean we’re we’re guilty of well, not us in particular, but I think the home inspection industry is guilty of inflating this as well. I think that there’s a tendency to, you know, maybe another home inspection company looks at it and goes, at this particular situation, let’s say that this affects somebody else, and they see that they’re getting an influx of these service inquiries from new construction inspections, maybe they change their process.
Tessa Murry (13:47.213)
Hmm.
Eric Houseman (14:15.32)
To start focusing more on that than they did before in order to quell those complaints when really you need to stand on business, stand on your SOP and say, this is not what we are here for. because the more that we focus on those things that don’t matter, and I say that with all the love and respect in the world for new homeowners that want to move into a perfect home.
Reuben (14:30.649)
Yeah.
Eric Houseman (14:44.758)
I get that. I understand it. But if we start focusing on those cosmetic things that don’t matter, not only are we going against the SOP, but it also increases the likelihood that we’re actually going to miss something of significance, something that truly matters.
Reuben (14:58.743)
Yeah, and well and and and we should say instead of saying don’t matter, we should say that don’t affect the functionality of the home. ‘Cause it really, really matters to people.
Eric Houseman (15:06.168)
Correct.
Tessa Murry (15:07.096)
Cosmetic things. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, that’s an interesting you know, observation and trend that you’re seeing here. And, you know, it’s speculation on why, but all those are good hypotheses as to people’s changing expectations, lack of education, lack of guidance, maybe
Eric Houseman (15:10.134)
It does. Yeah. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (15:31.884)
you know, quality of construction going down, lots of different variables there. It’s hard to hard to know for sure. But I’m I’m kinda curious to hear what some of these some of these service inquiries are that you’re getting.
Reuben (15:43.863)
I yeah.
Yeah, we got to go over some. And you know, I’ll just tell you, most of the new construction stuff, it’s it’s cosmetic. I mean, and we’ll we’ll let Eric get into some stories. But I also wanted to share that Eric is doing a really good job of tracking every little detail. Like, was the client present? Were they not? What what was it that led to a service ingrid? He’s got all, I mean, such a big spreadsheet of every detail.
Tessa Murry (16:07.614)
Tessa Murry (16:12.418)
Well
Reuben (16:14.283)
And another thing that I want to say is that I I know there are some home inspection companies who it you know they’ve got a process, like cause they get a lot of complaints. They get them every every week. People are complaining about stuff and they they will have a form on their website. Like, you’ve got a complaint form, whatever, go to this address, fill this out. When did you see the defect? When did you first?
Tessa Murry (16:32.022)
Hmm.
Reuben (16:40.761)
Blah blah blah. What did you do about it? Who did you notify? Include photos of and it’s like, how often do you get these? You must get them all the time if you have a standard form on your website, I think to myself. And they they really go through it and then they say, did you look in your report? What did it say in your report about this? And and the idea is to just make it so tough that people just get so frustrated trying to even file a complaint.
Tessa Murry (16:52.44)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (17:09.278)
Mm.
Reuben (17:09.411)
That they just give up and they go away and they never even file a complaint with the home inspection company. And then the home and the companies call it a win. They’re like, Yeah, you know, after they went through all this, they realized I don’t even have a complaint and they didn’t finish it. And my thought is, okay, you are making your already frustrated past client so much more frustrated that they don’t even want to talk to you. And now they just completely go away. They will never call you again and they
Will just leave a horrible taste in their mouth. And I told Eric when he got into this position, that will never be us. Someone’s got something that comes up, we call them back. We have a human and we we deal with it. And we we’re never gonna make this painful for people. They’re already frustrated. Call them back right away. Even if you don’t have all the answers, even if you haven’t looked at the report, whatever, hear them out.
Tessa Murry (17:45.378)
Hm.
Reuben (18:05.859)
Tell them I don’t have your report in front of me. Whatever it is, I’m gonna have to look it up and I’ll get back to you. But get back to people right away. That’s what we’ve always done. And it’s surely what we’ll always do, unless Eric feels really strongly some other way. Because I don’t like to micromanage people, but this is what I feel pretty strongly about. What do you think, Eric?
Eric Houseman (18:13.505)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (18:13.87)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (18:25.742)
Mm.
Eric Houseman (18:29.068)
No, I I completely agree. And I think I remember going to a conference of home inspectors and and hearing somebody talk about that. And this was, you know, probably a year or two into what I was doing and it had di hadn’t really refined the process yet. And I remember hearing this suggestion and bringing it back to you. And we had not really had that conversation up to that point. And I
It wasn’t that I wanted to do it, but I wanted to get your opinion on it and you were adamant no about it. And and I didn’t fight back. I just I wanted to hear your perspective on it because I was like, Well, is that is that gonna potentially help? And I agree with you that all it’s going to do is just frustrate people that much more. yeah.
Tessa Murry (19:16.674)
I was gonna say I it’s refreshing to hear that Ruben because I feel like in my personal experience in the real world, like you’ve you’ve got an issue with with healthcare or a furniture store or whatever it may be, and you call and you just wanna talk to somebody to try and resolve an issue and you get put through the
you know, this phone tree and all these numbers and put on hold and then you get talking to somebody who doesn’t understand you and then it you know, it’s just it’s that experience in and of itself is so exhausting and so frustrating. So I appreciate what you’re saying and I appreciate your stance on it and what you’re doing. And I I would think that that would be more and more rare as time goes on and AI gets involved and, you know, companies are are
Reuben (19:36.269)
Own tree.
Reuben (19:47.279)
Lower exhausting.
Tessa Murry (20:02.402)
becoming bigger and expanding and trying to, you know, increase profits. And so I appreciate what you’re doing. I’m sure you’re I’m sure and that also probably leads to some really good referrals and great reviews. I’m sure. Yeah.
Reuben (20:09.721)
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.
Reuben (20:19.287)
If we can yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve I’ve always said it’s like you you you can you can judge a company based on their five star reviews, but I mean you really wanna judge a company? Look at the one star reviews and see how they respond to that stuff. I mean, are they just mixing it up with people or are they going, Hey, give me a call and let’s try to make it right for you? I mean, that that speaks volumes. And some of the
Tessa Murry (20:36.267)
Uh-huh.
Tessa Murry (20:46.274)
Yeah. Yep.
Reuben (20:48.387)
Some of the companies that I’ve been most loyal to are companies who screwed something up and I call them up and they’re like, yeah, my bad. That is not our standard of service. Let me make it right for you right away. And they come out and they make it right. And it’s like, okay, all right. I am one hundred percent sold on you now. And I wouldn’t feel this way if we had just had a smooth transaction. So it it gives people a chance to prove themselves. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (20:58.158)
Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (21:10.285)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (21:13.694)
Exactly. Yeah, trust and loyalty. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good point.
Reuben (21:20.835)
All right, so Eric, sorry, we’ve taken up like half of our time just kind of setting the stage for this. But you know what? It’s a bigger topic. I didn’t want to just rush through this and go to examples. If we gotta take a couple of shows to cover a bunch of this stuff, that’s okay. Cause ’cause I know where to find you.
Tessa Murry (21:28.608)
It is.
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (21:36.643)
Yeah. I think there’s yeah. Yeah. And I think I think there’s a couple of things, you know, to add in. You know, you had alluded to kind of what the process is that we follow. And I I do definitely want to outline some things or just give some, you know, piece of pieces of advice for anybody that may own their own company, they’re in my position at a multi-inspector firm, or
Tessa Murry (21:37.027)
Yeah.
Eric Houseman (22:03.734)
Whatever you’re listening to this podcast because you happen to be in the service industry or something like that. first thing showing up matters. And I think this ties back to, you know, not making people fill out a form on the website and just jumping on this stuff right away. showing up matters. The the evidence that I can give you is one of the very first situations that I encountered.
in this position years ago was we did an inspection at a 90s built house. guy called up to the office, said that there were a number of windows that he had found since moving in that were in different stages of rot and decay. And I called him up right away and he happened to be doing a big renovation on his house. He was there. I went out the next day. They hadn’t moved in yet. Kitchen was all torn apart, but I went
Through the house when I got there, I opened up every single window in the house, went back to the outside because they were all casement windows, and just started poking and prodding at every single one of them. And I found it’s probably a 4,000 square foot house. I probably found about a dozen to 16 different windows that were in different stages of rot. and this was pre-COVID. I can’t imagine the potential cost now that prices have gone up with supply chain and installation, but
Estimate, I would say somewhere in the ballpark of probably eighty to a hundred thousand dollars worth of windows would be my guess. not all of them needed to be replaced right away, but you know, of course, we all know 90s wood windows in Minnesota, they’re either they’ve been replaced or they’re at the end of their life. and I’m standing there having a conversation with him in his driveway and very, very nice gentleman. Near the end of the conversation, because we had discussed before, like we we have a
a a very clearly outlined policy. If you’re not a hundred percent satisfied with the inspection, we will refund you the cost of your inspection. No questions asked. And he looked at me and he said, you know, I’m in the service industry. I just really appreciate you coming out, spending the time here, hearing my side of things, not passing me off to some call center or something like that or insurance. Tell you what, refund me the cost of the inspection, we’ll call it good.
Eric Houseman (24:31.286)
My jaw almost hit the driveway.
Tessa Murry (24:31.638)
Nice. A reasonable gen reasonable person. Which that’s refreshing.
Reuben (24:36.111)
Yeah. Yeah. That that definitely could have been a very big insurance claim on our part.
Eric Houseman (24:36.984)
Sure. Yes.
Tessa Murry (24:42.306)
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (24:43.404)
Yeah. So showing up matters. That that’s a big one. use your yeah.
Reuben (24:46.211)
Yeah. Can and you know what? Can can I pause on that and just share the opposite? Okay. the this was back in probably two thousand fourteen, something like that. I don’t remember exactly. It was it was a while ago. It was before Eric was on the team. And we got this call and I probably told the story on the podcast test. You’ve probably heard it before, but I we we got a call that we we s
Tessa Murry (24:46.572)
Yeah. Showing you care and listening. Mm-hmm.
Eric Houseman (24:54.445)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (24:54.999)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Reuben (25:16.343)
the this guy’s roof is leaking and he needs a new roof and we missed it. So I said, all right, let me let me take a look. I looked at our report. It was raining. Our inspector hadn’t walked the roof. He couldn’t see everything. And so I said, let me let me take a peek. I I mean I know what’s going on. It’s like there’s a plumbing vent that’s not flashed right. I’m thinking I’ll just fix it for him. And I’m in, I’m in the neighborhood. I said I’ll come by this afternoon.
He’s like, Well, I’m not gonna be home. I said, You don’t need to be home. I don’t even need you there. I’ll just pop up, I’ll take a look at the roof, I’ll leave my ladder up against there, no one needs to be there. And he he wanted to be there, but I was in the neighborhood and it was like it was St. Paul, and it’s the other side of town. And and he’s like, Yeah, okay, I guess you can. And so I stopped by and I I’ll I’ll shorten the story. there there’s a lot more to it. I could make this a half hour story, but
Tessa Murry (26:11.595)
Yeah.
Reuben (26:13.505)
It’s the only time that I’ve ever gone to court. We ended up going to small claims court. I told him we’d fix it. I I told him, you know, I’ll pay for it. I’ll re in fact, I’ll refund the cost of your inspection and the radon and this, which far outweighs the cost of fixing this little thing. But it’s like the i somehow he smelled blood or something, and he wanted a whole new roof. And his roof was not toast. His roof was fine. It had
Tessa Murry (26:17.71)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (26:38.574)
So
Reuben (26:42.191)
many years of life left in it, but it’s like he just he wanted a new roof. And and the the judge or whomever we were presenting, yeah, it was a judge. Well, as soon as he realized that I had already been out there and I I tried to give this guy a full refund or whatever, I mean he just looked up from his paperwork and he was like, What are we even doing here? And he dismissed it. I mean it was it was done. And won one
Tessa Murry (26:47.278)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (27:04.792)
Hmm.
Tessa Murry (27:10.124)
Yeah.
Reuben (27:10.199)
I’m doing air quotes for anyone not watching. You don’t win when you go to court. I mean, if you go to court, you’ve lost. Doesn’t matter what the outcome is. I mean, that was a colossal, colossal investment in my time. In Bill’s time, Bill was training to be the service manager for structure tech at the time. And my inspector’s time, the person who did it, because the inspector came too. I mean, such a such a waste of time. And
Tessa Murry (27:17.154)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (27:25.378)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (27:37.358)
Yeah.
Reuben (27:39.972)
I am convinced that if I had just like bent my schedule a little bit and come an hour later and met the guy there, and we could have had a personal relationship, a talk, like Eric’s talking about, and I could have heard him. We could have settled it right there on site, and it would have been over with. But I was just maybe. I mean, I don’t know that, but I
Tessa Murry (28:04.523)
Maybe.
Maybe. No.
Reuben (28:09.615)
Pretty sure. And the biggest takeaway I got there is don’t try to save myself an hour to hour of time to go check it out without someone there. Like if someone wants to meet me there, be there. Listen to them. So that was that was my big mistake of doing the opposite of what Eric does today. Yeah. Just wanted to help hammer your point home, Eric.
Tessa Murry (28:29.326)
Hmm.
Eric Houseman (28:32.3)
Yeah. yeah, it I think the other thing, you know, when when you are there, you definitely want to avoid I always explain to people this is just a fact finding mission. That that’s it. I’m not here to go over the report with you. I’m not here to talk SOP. I’m not here to talk about what we do and what we don’t do. I’m not here to talk about all of the limitations. It’s just I want to see.
Tessa Murry (28:33.25)
Yeah. No.
Eric Houseman (29:00.962)
what you’re experiencing. I’ll go back, we’ll review the report, review the photos, all that stuff after the fact. This is just me in your home. This is your comfort space. This is your safe space. I’m not going to get defensive at that point in time. That that’s not the place for it. yeah.
Tessa Murry (29:24.846)
So your protocol, Eric, is to take these, you know, quote complaints and then go meet with the client on site.
Eric Houseman (29:32.981)
If possible, yes. Yeah. Yeah. I and I every one of these is different, right? Like some of them, it’s it’s not necessary. you know, when we start talking about examples of the most ridiculous ones, it’s like, okay, well, yeah, that one you you definitely don’t need to make a trip out for that. the other thing is, is and our insurance people, if you’re listening, put earmuffs on, I use them as little as possible. I understand why they’re there.
Tessa Murry (29:34.819)
Time.
Eric Houseman (30:01.378)
I I know what they’re there to do. but they are a bull in a china shop compared to how I would prefer to handle a situation. they they’re only involved if absolutely necessary. For multiple reasons. I mean, anything that we do turn over to them when we go to renew insurance every single year, we have to explain what we changed in order to.
Tessa Murry (30:20.014)
Mm.
Eric Houseman (30:27.938)
mitigate this same thing from happening again down the road. It’s just more questions and more time that I have to answer if I turn something over to them. If it’s not necessary, it’s not going to them. I’ll handle it in-house.
Tessa Murry (30:31.377)
yeah.
Tessa Murry (30:36.92)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben (30:37.038)
Yeah.
Reuben (30:40.813)
Yep. Yeah. All right. So Eric, we’ve we’ve set the stage properly. I want to hear about some of the craziest stuff you’ve had to deal with.
Tessa Murry (30:41.72)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Houseman (30:52.558)
all right. I I’ll start out with a banger right off. this is probably one of my most favorite ones. I ended up getting yeah, drum roll. Ended up getting a call from a client. we’ve talked about you know appliances here on the podcast before. They’re a big percentage of our service inquiries that we get. and I think that’s for a multitude of different reasons. But
Reuben (31:03.129)
John Roll.
Eric Houseman (31:22.166)
There was several things that he had talked about with the appliances, the dryer being noisy, the washer not draining appropriately, something to do with the dishwasher, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There was like five or six different things. And I mean, he I’m talking to him on the phone, and I’m like, I don’t understand how this stuff could not have been in the report. Like, all of this is within the Ashie SOP. If an inspector is there following our process.
Surely they would have documented all of this stuff because it was a vacant house. And I end up going back, looked at the report after talking to the client, pulled up photos, and I’m looking and I’m like, all of this stuff is documented in the report. There’s a video of the noisy washer, there’s all of these, like everything is outlined in the report. I’m like, how does this get missed? And I go back to the order.
client had never paid for the inspection.
Reuben (32:23.759)
And and and what what what does that imply?
Eric Houseman (32:25.144)
So
Eric Houseman (32:28.366)
Да implies if you didn’t pay for the inspection, you don’t have access to the report.
Tessa Murry (32:35.44)
- Wait, so we did the inspection but then they never paid, so they never got the report.
Eric Houseman (32:39.224)
Yeah.
Reuben (32:42.285)
He never he never paid for it. He never got the report. He has no idea what’s in the report. Yet he has the audacity
Tessa Murry (32:47.95)
Dude, to to complain.
I can’t that’s ridiculous. That’s absolutely ridiculous. So did that one go away as soon as you’re like, hey, dude, you didn’t even pay for your inspection?
Reuben (33:02.915)
Yeah, what happened?
Eric Houseman (33:03.992)
What I’m like I I didn’t even know how to respond. I I remember like I think Mindy was fairly new in her position, you know, as the operations manager for us. And I called her and I was like, I I don’t even know what to do. I I don’t even know what to say. But it’s it it’s obvious at that point. It’s like, okay, we go back to well, if you you’re not a hundred percent satisfied with your home inspection, we’ll give you your money back. Wait, I can’t do that.
So that’s not an option. So that was the one situation where you go back and you’re like, Hey, I I’m sorry, and you outline it in an email and you take excerpts from the report and you go, All of this was documented in your report, which I know you haven’t looked at because you haven’t paid.
Tessa Murry (33:36.536)
Wait.
Reuben (33:48.463)
But but now you’re yeah, now you’re giving him a sneak peek at the report that he hasn’t even paid for.
Tessa Murry (33:54.486)
Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (33:55.893)
At I think at that point in time, I actually ended up just, you know, because our reports are URL based, but you can convert them to a PDF. I think in that situation, I ended up converting it to a PDF and I emailed him the report. And I just said here’s your report. As you can see, all of these things are clearly outlined. By the way, I can’t refund you for something that you never paid for, but here’s your free report to
Reuben (34:05.625)
Yeah.
Reuben (34:11.161)
Did you?
Tessa Murry (34:19.241)
Eric Houseman (34:25.474)
Make this go away.
Reuben (34:28.087)
You didn’t ask him for money?
Eric Houseman (34:30.316)
No, and I think I think it was like a year ago I went back and I looked at this that I looked at this order in ISN and I think it’s like fifty percent paid. Like he was paying l chunks and pieces of it to try and
Tessa Murry (34:30.745)
my gosh.
Tessa Murry (34:43.31)
Right.
Reuben (34:48.267)
my goodness. my goodness. All right.
Tessa Murry (34:49.142)
What what? I will never understand. Someone’s spun someone’s buying a house and they can’t afford an inspection or decide not to. that’s cr that’s crazy.
Eric Houseman (34:50.06)
Yeah. I I haven’t looked in a while, but
Eric Houseman (35:03.404)
Yeah. Yeah. Like it’s it’s one thing for us to, you know, go out to the house, do the inspection, the client pays for it, they go through the report, or we think they go through the report, and then things come up and you can reference back and you can say, Well, that was in there. But it’s just like what this slot could have been filled with someone that
truly needed and wanted an inspection. And it it’s almost insulting to the profession, right? Like I don’t know.
Tessa Murry (35:38.986)
What?
Reuben (35:40.205)
Yeah, we’re busy. We’ve got full schedules.
Eric Houseman (35:43.182)
Yeah. Especially this time of year. Yes.
Tessa Murry (35:43.448)
Yeah.
Eric, you’re much you’re much more generous than I would have been. I would have been like, Sir, did we learn a lesson here?
What would you do differently next time?
Eric Houseman (35:57.167)
Yeah. that thankfully that has only happened once. Never thought it would happen, but thankfully it’s only happened once. So
Reuben (35:57.232)
What did you learn?
Tessa Murry (36:00.991)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (36:07.158)
Is he? Yeah.
Reuben (36:12.687)
Alright, give me another one, Eric.
Eric Houseman (36:15.166)
I mean, the things that jump to the forefront of my mind right now, that’s probably the most ridiculous one, but the the new construction ones just over the years, those are the ones that well, hang on, let me back up.
I’ll I’ll go into a generic example of these things. Is client gets the report, they review it, they move into the house. This is a really good example of, you know, kind of setting the stage or setting expectations for a client of we’re I’ve heard you say this, Ruben. We’re we’re here to find the elephants, not the mice. Like we’re looking for the big stuff, especially in an occupied house, there’s always going to be minor things that are missed.
Reuben (36:53.764)
Yeah.
Eric Houseman (37:03.288)
The house is lived in for a month or two months after the fact. Things can happen. I would speculate that once the transaction goes through, the people that currently live there sometimes they just don’t care. And things happen and things break. And but the
It’s very common, and Ruben, you’ll echo this because I know you used to do this. I hear the same things in most service inquiries where it’s like, if I had known this.
Reuben (37:38.655)
I would have asked a seller to
Eric Houseman (37:41.707)
Exactly. And I go back and I review the report, and I’m I’m not gonna sit here and say that we’re perfect. We are human. We miss things. There are things that we have legitimately missed. Any home inspector out there will give you a laundry list of things that they have missed for whatever reason. But when you go back and you look at the report and they start bringing up things like an exterior faucet that’s
Tessa Murry (37:41.806)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Houseman (38:11.722)
leaking or is dripping, right? It doesn’t completely shut off. Or you talk about a minor plumbing leak underneath the bathroom sink, like the drain line leak, something along those lines. And they pull out the if I had known this, I would have, you know, I wouldn’t have gone through with the purchase of this house or I would have gone back to the cellar. And you look at the report and you go, Okay, well, what about the furnace that was short cycling? What about the FPE stab lock panel? Like I’m
Picking kind of the worst of the worst.
Reuben (38:42.349)
Yeah, what about all the elephants that you chose to ignore?
Eric Houseman (38:46.124)
Yes. So we’re bringing up all of these other things, these minor imperfections. I have never done this and I never will. But in the back of my mind, I’m always like, I want to ask people, like, what did you do about this? Because if you let this go, if you didn’t ask for this, if this wasn’t repaired, these other things that you’re bringing up are pointless.
Reuben (39:09.805)
Yeah, it’s it’s one of two things, Eric. Either they think you’re dumb or they’re lying. That’s it. That’s all there is.
Tessa Murry (39:10.294)
Mm-hmm.
Eric Houseman (39:15.938)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (39:20.754)
Or maybe they’re first time homeowners who have no idea about anything, any system, any part of a house, didn’t have a good real estate agent, and they are completely lost in lacking guidance on where to focus their concerns and efforts.
Reuben (39:35.748)
Yeah.
Eric Houseman (39:37.88)
Yep. That’s
Reuben (39:38.531)
Yeah, yeah.
Tessa Murry (39:38.9)
giving them the benefit of the doubt. I mean, i if you talk to somebody who’s never had a house before, they they need help interpreting, okay, well, what’s a big deal and what’s not a big deal a lot of the time.
Reuben (39:49.55)
Yep. Yep. It’s true. And you know, when when we get those, it’s like we’ll do what we can. It’s like, little leak underneath the sink. Eric’s got his toolkit. Like here, I’ll tighten that up for you. We’ll fix that. Like, I mean it’s
Eric Houseman (40:01.816)
Yeah. There’s been plenty of stuff that I’ve fixed when I’m out there. That it’s just it’s just easier. It you know, who who is it that that George always says when he’s on a home inspection, if it takes less time to fix it than it does to report on it, just fix it. It’s pretty easy to pull out your screwdriver and tighten a door hand or you know, d a doorknob or something, cabinet hardware or something like that, then report on it.
Tessa Murry (40:02.197)
I have yeah.
Tessa Murry (40:09.271)
Yeah.
Reuben (40:18.275)
Yes. Yes.
Tessa Murry (40:18.456)
Yes.
Tessa Murry (40:25.676)
Yeah. Yeah.
Reuben (40:25.677)
Cabinet hinge, doorknob, whatever. Yeah. Just take care of it. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (40:31.478)
Yeah, just take care of it. Yep. I think the there was no. But we do joke about it. We’re like, we’ll send the seller the bill. That’s fine. Yeah, always. Yeah. there was one here’s a good example of contractor trying to throw us under the bus. this is a few years ago. It was a one of our inspectors called out a number of things with
Tessa Murry (40:31.946)
Yeah. Yep.
We don’t charge extra for that, do we?
Who wrote?
Reuben (40:43.607)
Always. Always. Yeah.
Eric Houseman (41:01.288)
an electrical panel. one of them being tandem breakers inside of a panel. And sellers hired an electrician, electrician came out there, basically gave their blessing and said, the home inspector doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Th this isn’t an issue. And buyer’s agent went back to the inspector. The inspector then ended up coming to me. So
This kind of isn’t like your traditional service inquiry. Like we’re still a couple of days after the inspection, but it’s a good example of, you know, the the degree that we will go to. Inspector came to me and said, Hey, we’ve got a dispute here, not really sure what to do. and I ended up reviewing the report, looking at photos. I got the documentation from the electrical contractor that was out there, and I ended up actually calling.
The panel manufacturer. And I talked to someone in their technical department that had been working there for, I think it was like 17 or 18 years at the time. Shout out to this guy if he’s still working there. Kudos to you, because this was probably one of the most helpful people I have ever talked to anywhere. He said that.
because the main issue was is the the tandem breakers in the panel. We said that there shouldn’t be the electrical contractor said it was fine, which we ended up being right, spoiler alert. But this guy at GE ended up doing the research and he was like, This is what I can tell you. We have not allowed tandem breakers in any of our panels since X month of X year, because we no longer produce them, because our panels are not rated for them.
Not to mention the fact, also looking at your report, it specifically states that there are another breakers or another circuit breaker manufacturer inside this GE panel. This actually voids the warranty on the panel because we can’t guarantee the connection at the bus bar. So you are perfectly in the right. This guy ended up putting a letter together for me on GE Company Letterhead that I sent out to the buyer.
Tessa Murry (43:07.383)
Eric Houseman (43:22.188)
buyer’s agent and the listing agent, the electrical contractor ended up coming back 24 hours later, swapped out the entire panel, and upgraded it.
Tessa Murry (43:32.91)
For free. Wow. Well that’s a that’s a happy story. I’m sure they don’t always end up like that, Eric, do they?
Reuben (43:33.038)
my.
Eric Houseman (43:34.86)
Well, probably on the seller’s dollar, but it there yeah.
Reuben (43:37.966)
Yeah.
Eric Houseman (43:45.24)
No. No, they don’t. They don’t. No.
Reuben (43:48.334)
And you know, in in some of those cases, it just feels like it it just feels like almost a lose lose, because you you do this and now you’ve already got an electrician who’s they’re gonna begrudgingly do this and they’re gonna be like the home inspector is a complete nitpicker and this doesn’t really matter, but now you just cost the seller all this money and I’m gonna do it anyway and I’m gonna get paid and they make us
look bad, even though we’re right. Or we gotta go back and say, yeah, okay, fine. The electrician said that, whatever. we said it’s we said it’s wrong. They’re saying it’s right. Do whatever you want with it. And we don’t dig our heels in, but then we look dumb and we look incompetent. And it’s like we’re we’re the bad guys no matter what. It it’s it’s not a good situation to be in. But what what else can we do?
Tessa Murry (44:19.704)
So
Tessa Murry (44:45.934)
Yeah.
Eric Houseman (44:47.562)
It my standpoint is always first and foremost, take care of the client. The client is who matters the most. That that’s our paying customer. That’s who we are beholden to. second to that, and going back to kind of the process, and Ruben, you’re the one that really encouraged me to do this, is take care of the agent. Because the agent is likely involved in this conversation. The agent is likely the one who pushed the client to come back to us.
So if we’re not including the agent in these correspondence, we’re relying on the client to tell the agent that we contacted them and attempted to make things right or made things right. Our relationship with the agents, you know, we’re going to get multiple transactions a year from agents versus the average homeowner in the United States moves every seven to ten years. The agents are the ones that we need to take care of. We need to make sure that they know that we care about their clients and that we are going to follow up.
Reuben (45:40.685)
Yeah.
Reuben (45:48.1)
Yes.
Eric Houseman (45:48.331)
And then last out of all of those, it is if there is the ability for me to defend us, defend our inspector, defend the company, I will do so. I always will. I am willing to fall on the sword from a monetary standpoint, but if we’re right, we’re right.
Reuben (46:08.931)
Yep. And you know, you you talk about the agent part, and I just want to expand on that a little bit, because you know, there’s a lot of chest thumping home inspectors who are like, I don’t have anything to do with agents. I don’t send report to agents and and they’re not my client and blah blah blah. My only care in the world is the person buying the house. And I think to myself, that’s extremely short-sighted.
Eric Houseman (46:37.08)
Mm-hmm.
Reuben (46:37.795)
Person who’s helping them through this transaction is the real estate agent. They’re the professional. They ought to be looped in on all this stuff. I mean, you see deals go so poorly. You see, you see buyers asking for the dumbest things in the world and at the most outrageous prices when you don’t have agents involved. Because they have no idea what they’re doing. They don’t know how to buy a house. They don’t know what standard protocol. We
Th there’s very much a place for agents. They they help these deals get through. And if if we’re not helping out the agents and and giving them the stuff that they need to help their clients, we’re doing a disservice to our clients. And I mean, sure, there’s there’s a few bad eggs out there when it comes to real estate agents, but those people usually just don’t work with us. I mean, most of the agents we work with are high integrity agents.
Who want to take care of their clients and they just want us to help them help the clients? We’re all after the same thing. So it, you know, I this this is not this is not called pandering to agents. This is not doing any type of disservice to the clients. This is helping our clients. So I think that’s just an important thing I wanted to expound on a little bit. Yeah. All right. Well.
Tessa Murry (47:57.454)
Mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (48:02.402)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Reuben (48:05.921)
Eric, that I I wanted to hear more examples, but we we are at time. We had kind of a hard stop for the show today. In our next episode, hopefully our next episode. I won’t make any promises, but Eric, I do want to Huh. In an upcoming some upcoming podcast, we’re gonna have Eric back on and we’re gonna talk about some of the new construction defects. We’ll we’ll we’ll come back to that because
Eric Houseman (48:19.318)
In an upcoming podcast. In an upcoming podcast.
Tessa Murry (48:28.022)
Yeah.
Reuben (48:34.413)
You’ve shared a bunch of these with me and I I think they’re they’re entertaining. Yeah.
Tessa Murry (48:43.16)
Will we see a blog on them sometime soon, Ruben?
Reuben (48:47.011)
Tessa, it’s not a bad idea. I’ll have to think about excuse me, I’ll have to think about that. I’m not sure if I wanna I’m not sure if I wanna do that or not. I don’t want to embarrass people because then I’d have to share photos. It’s it’s fine to describe it like this, but once I share photos, it’s like maybe that’s crossing a line. Yeah. I’m not sure.
Tessa Murry (48:55.126)
Mm, mm-hmm.
Tessa Murry (49:02.947)
Yeah.
Tessa Murry (49:08.672)
wait a year and then No, I’m just kidding. Then it won’t be relevant anymore.
Reuben (49:11.689)
Well, yeah, if I sit on it long enough, maybe, maybe. All right. Well, for the listeners, if you got thoughts on any of the stuff we were covering, if you’ve got you know, if for home inspectors, if you’ve had some crazy we call them service inquiries, crazy complaints, whatever that you’d like to share, write in. We would love to hear about it. You can reach us. Our email is podcast at structured tech.com.
Tessa Murry (49:16.494)
Yeah.
Reuben (49:41.168)
And we’d love to hear about it. We’ll read it on the air. So, that that’d be a good show. So until next time, I’m Ruben for Tessa and Eric signing off, and we’ll probably catch you next week. Thanks for listening, everyone. Take care.
Tessa Murry (49:46.664)
Nah, that’d be fun.
Tessa Murry (49:59.279)
Take care.