Towne & Country Building Inspection, Inc.

In my opinion, this home inspector was negligent in not identifying the defective roof on a nine year old home. The gutters full of granules that was easy to see from a second story window wasn't even enough for them to figure it out. You would think a home inspector would be aware of a CertainTeed organic shingle class action lawsuit and recognize a deteriorating roof when they saw it. Hiring Towne and Country Building Inspection was the worst decision I have ever made. I have had four prior home inspections and I never had a problem until Towne and Country Building Inspection did mine.

Review: I regret the day I ever heard of this company. THIS WAS A $15-20K MISTAKE! At the last minute, [redacted] was not available for the scheduled inspection as promised, so [redacted] (someone he later admitted was a poor replacement and had a huge learning curve when it comes to the process) came out to the house in his place. Because of their sloppy, cookie cutter, copy and paste inspection on a ten year old house, they failed to properly call out the fact that the roof needed MAJOR repair (by major, needs to be completely replaced in two years). My seasoned realtor didn't even call this out because the report is so confusing and sloppy. The report simply stated the roof was typical to below and they recommend another inspection (because they do not know how to inspect a roof even though this is stated on their web site. When I brought this to their attention they told me I didn't hire them to do a roof inspection. I thought the most important parts of a home inspection is the roof and foundation, but this company will only stand in the drive way and take a picture and suggest a roofing specialist inspect the roof AGAIN. And Don't expect them to get a ladder and take a closer look as is stated on their website. There are many, many claims on their website that are not true, and they even admitted this. I would be happy to attach a copy of the report for your review.Desired Settlement: Full refund of the cost of the home inspection and credit for a different home inspector. I have zero faith in this inspection. Negotiated payment for replacing the roof.

Business

Response:

Our reports are very detailed and recommendations are sometimes made for further evaluations. For example if there is an issue with the foundation, we will recommend a foundation expert to evaluate and/or provide an estimate for repair. The buyer then will make the decision on how to proceed. Do they want to walk away from the sale? Do they want to amend the offer so that the seller pays for repairs? Do they want to renegotiate the purchase price? Do they want to budget for future repair costs?These are all decisions that only the client and their representatives can decide. We clearly state that the client should call us after reading the report if they have any questions, need any clarity or want suggestions. Our phone number is on the bottom of each page of the report for that very reason. We inspected this property on September 11, 2014. Noted defects and items suggested for further evaluation were listed throughout the report and then again in the summary. The client called our office the following day to discuss radon mitigation and get some various referrals. One of which, was an independent roof inspector.We recently discovered that he did indeed hire the recommended independent roof inspector, except he waited until December, after it was too late to go back to the sellers. He had already purchased the home. The client called our office again on Friday August 7th, 2015. He was very upset and wanted us to help pay for a new roof. He told us that "we should have reached out to him" about the roof. He didn't feel he should have had to pay for any other evaluations because he had paid for a home inspection. He threatened to have his uncle in California sue us. He threatened to write bad reviews on Google, on Angie's List, and file a complaint with the Revdex.com. He threatened to go to Shorewest Realtors, he threatened that his agent would never use us again. He made claims that the seller had known about defective roof materials and had not disclosed this to him. When we read his review on Angie's List last that he wrote last month, he complained about the deck. That was the first we had ever heard anything of that issue.The client next contacted us via email on Friday, August 28th, 2015, that he would be having the deck repaired the following week and that if we wanted to inspect the deck prior to the repairs, we would need to come over on that day or on the weekend. Because of the brief notice and this enraged client, we put our efforts into hiring an expert to go out and evaluate his deck. The client responded to us via email "It's good to know you didn't think it was important enough to look at it yourself." What he has once again failed to understand is that if we were preparing for arbitration, we didn't need to see the deck, because we already had evaluated it. We needed a professional opinion and report in writing. By the way, the 10 year old deck was just fine. We offer our clients "lifetime call back privileges", meaning that a past client can call us for house advice or referrals anytime as long as they own the property. We en[redacted] the relationships that have formed with our clients over the years. A large part of our success is the repeat inspections that we are hired for when our clients move on to their next homes. In our 20 + years in business, this is the first time we have had a complaint filed with the Revdex.com.