Complaint Review: The Home Inspectors LLC - New Albany Indiana

What a terrible place to have your "investment" inspected. I knew from the get go this company was bad news. I made it a point to be there during the entire home inspection. I arrived about 15 minutes prior to the inspection start time only to find out the inspector had already done half the work without myself or the buying agent present.

During the inspection that I got to walk through. I was told several things like the age of my AC/Heater/Water heater was 15 years old. Only to find out when getting AC work done that this was installed in 1970. I even asked him if this could really only be 15 years old and he confirmed. Later after reviewing the document that was emailed to me after the fact I found the heater age was put on the document as 58 years old. 

I wasn't too concerned with this since I have a home warranty and knew these systems were aging, despite that I had calculated the risks and decided I was OK moving forward with the purchase. The home inspector did find several things wrong that were obvious, such as the deck floor and foundation were a mess and simply had to be replaced. He also caught some foundation work that the seller ended up fixing before we closed on the house. There was also some brick work that needed to be done, as well as replacing the windows.

After a heat wave this summer we had the home warranty come out to look at the AC as it was running constantly but only keeping the inner parts of the house cool, such as the hallway and the kitchen. After several weeks of back and forth with the warranty company they advised the problem was with my duct work, it was improperly installed, not insulated and therefore they were not responsible for fixing. 

At this point I had to see for myself what they were talking about and that didn't take long. Immediately upon opening the crawlspace I saw a portion of the duct work being held together by house siding. I went back to my home inspection and found the only mention of the duct work was that some vents were loose/disconnected. Oddly enough I had a picture of a small crack on a window but no picture of this MacGuyver attempt at duct work. After another call to the home warranty and reviewing the work order they provided during their visits. I found that the duct work was simply being held together by its own weight. There was a note made by one of the repair techs when asked how bad it was he told me "I could jump through the house and it would all fall down." None of the duct work was properly seated, secured and simply just jointed together. 

While the duct work was the most costly of my concerns (estimated $4000+ repair) he also missed the disconnected vent from the water heater that was possibly leaking CARBON MONOXIDE into the house. After all was said and done I felt like this particular home inspector simply was looking for a paycheck and not in anyway concerned with "Inspecting my investment" as their company slogan claims. 

I attempted to have an out of court meeting with the home inspector to address these issues but he had a lot of excuses and zero answers. When asked about the disconnected vent his response was "Did they test if it was leaking carbon monoxide, if not it's not my problem." When asked about the duct work his response was "We just look at the house and it's up us (the home buyer) to determine if it is a problem." At the end of the day he was only a professional on the items I found to be missed when he suited his case and immediately said he wasn't a professional when it came to items that didn't. 

TL;DR if you want a home inspection and this company is your only choice. You might as well don some kneepads and look at it yourself (even if you have no home building experience) because it's up to you to figure out what's wrong with the house if they miss something.