|### Paul McIntyre (paulmc)|7:05 PM (1 hour ago)||
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|to Gromicko
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Hi Nick,
Thanks for chatting with me today about some of the ideas circulating in the industry related to HomeGauge and our parent company. As we discussed, our parent company absolutely doesn’t sell our customers’ or clients’ data.
We’re part of a larger company in an industry that is required to play by the rules, and we take data privacy and security very seriously. In fact, we are one of the most regulated and secure industries in the country. We follow strict privacy laws and extra-tough security standards to make sure your information stays safe. You can trust that your data won’t be mishandled, compromised, tampered with, or accessed by anyone without explicit consent. We’re committed to transparency and security for all involved.
Insurance companies and home inspectors share a common goal: helping homeowners understand what’s happening in their homes and making sure the property and the those living there are safe and sound.
Our main objective is to prevent problems before they even happen. When things go wrong, it can cost homeowners significantly; they could lose valuable or irreplaceable items, pay high deductibles, and in a worst-case scenario, someone could get hurt. It’s a lose/lose situation for all involved. We want to reduce risks in homes and improve things for everyone so none of this happens in the first place.
For example, a major issue for preventable claims in a home is when rodents chew through a plastic water line behind the fridge, causing extensive damage. These incidents usually happen when families are away since rodents are more active in an empty home, which can be a disaster. But we can prevent this by spotting these risks early and upgrading to a braided water line to prevent water-related damage in homes.
Situations like this are why I want to find ways to connect the dots between the inspection world and the insurance world. Our goal is simple: how can we help homeowners with the ups and downs of owning a home and keeping it safe? We have a shared objective: how to help homeowners navigate the complexities of owning a home and reduce risks to their most valuable asset.
Thanks again for your time today! I hope this helps clear things up and shows how we can benefit from working together.
Please thank Mr. McIntyre for confirming my previous posts on this topic. I hope it is now clear to you as well that American Family is harvesting and using information from home inspection reports for insurance coverage purposes.
Keep in mind that the homebuyer that hires an inspector using American Family’s software program does NOT even have home insurance at the time of the inspection. Accordingly, this is NOT a simple matter of a home insurance company working to help a customer and … most importantly … it is something that is being concealed from the homebuyer who unwittingly allows this information to be provided to American Family by their home inspector.
Again, it is sadly humorous to see how home inspectors are the ones paying the vendors for the software that vendors use to harvest this data. It should be the other way around.
Interesting how they did say they don’t sell it but they do use it.
That is what so many fail to see. You have displayed this accordingly and hopefully Inspectors will at least listen and think before they buy into these things.
Unfortunately so many are not able to think for themselves and just do what they are told.
Not enough money in selling a product to a very limited subset of businesses. The resale/use of information today is well into the tens of billions of dollars annually. The more information you have to resell and/or use the more revenue you can generate.
This makes me want to go back to generating my own written reports. I don’t use Home gauge but I’m sure Spectora is no different and they’ve expressed wanting to do similar. My buyers and agents love Spectora and the ease of use. But honestly— I’m not sure it’s worth it. Especially if we let this industry go the way it seems to be.
Just one of the many reasons we had enough and left. Once Russell sold, it quickly went downhill. Everyone is herded towards the barely functional web writer with many lowball offers soliciting newbies to join. NXT did the same thing and look at where they are now. All about gathering that client info. It’s like crack to these software providers.
They use the accumulated data and uploaded inspection report data to pitch products such as homeowners insurance and “renovation deals”, according to their own site.
Renovation deals sounds a lot like “lead harvesting”, AKA Service Advisor. I doubt they give any of that away for free.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Exactly. Remember, our clients benefit when Home Gauge offers them something that the client seeks and has explicitly stated that they want.
That’s not “selling data.”
The problem with selling data isn’t normally with your software company selling data to the first buyer. Perhaps they sell data to repair contractors who can help repair the issue you discovered on the inspection. That’s probably not horrible. The problem is that once your data is sold to a handful of contractors… it’s loose! It gets sold and resold again and again. And in time, theoretically minutes, your client is getting a call from a company that is offering something they didn’t seek and don’t want.
This is the opposite of what Home Gauge does. Home Gauge doesn’t sell data.
I use home gauge. It’s pretty apparent I am the data collection agent for their enterprise so they can use that information to their advantage. Customer acquisition is expensive. But not only did I aquire the customer, they charge me for the software to input the customer data they need.
I also use Home gauge and have for years. As someone pointed out earlier in this thread, ever since Russel sold out, the place has gone down hill. I have battled with them about soliciting my clients. I’ve had to pull out from processing my payments through their portal. I’ve dealt with their price increases and less than adequate service. If I wasn’t on the tail end of working (Coming up on 62 in Dec) and had more time on my hands, I’d leave them in a heartbeat. OK I’m ranting now…
So many of us ranted about all of this years ago, ad nauseam. This now seems like a slam dunk for you Nick, get software choices for reporting etc, free of encumbrance from data… the final nail so to speak. I hope you get it done and free this industry from its peril and loss of consumer confidence. You got this.
A number of years back, during the days of a certain vendor/client data harvestor debacle, I verified the privacy policies of all the venders I used, I found it’s also a good idea to periodically check back to make sure that the rules haven’t changed.
At the time I used ACC and they didn’t have a privacy policy in place, after I contacted Paul, he had one written up for ACC stating that client information was not shared with anyone without the inspectors consent, or unless ordered by a court of law.
We will only share personally identifiable information with a third party if and when the individual submitting this information has permitted us to do so, or if we are required by law to do so.
If you are an inspector, you can opt out of sharing your clients’ personal information with Porch Group Companies for the purpose of receiving marketing calls by disabling Porch Gold in the Services.
They don’t need to “sell” it to themselves. American Family possesses and owns information from these HG inspection reports for their own use. It becomes their property. The home inspector’s customer … without his customer’s knowledge … is already providing American Family with the complete description (varying upon the abilities of the inspector writing the report) of the home they intend to buy.
Additionally, as with any other vendor owning the information in the home inspection reports they are provided by home inspectors, their property becomes the property of the next vendor to come along and buy them out.
By the way, American Family does routinely sell this information to third party vendors. Only when the homebuyer becomes aware that American Family has it and sends them an email requesting that the information not be sold in the required format, as instructed, will American Family restrict the use of the information to their own purpose. Otherwise, the information will be sold (and resold) on the open market.
Home buyers should be informed when their home inspection reports are owned, read, and utilized by third parties. Even you should agree with that, Nick.
It is sad that many Inspectors do not understand or care about this aspect as long as they get what they want. The consumers get hung out to dry without little or no viable recourse.
Here in Texas our laws/rules force confidentiality of client information and that includes the report. Only the client can waive that and although the format/transmission of the waiver is not specified it is in the Inspectors interest to get that in writing. Of course many Inspectors have the BS “Third Party” crap language in their contracts that clients do not understand either that they are waiving their confidentiality rights. This situation/concept would actually make a good “Request For Interpretation” (RFI) to our licensing agency.
What! You don’t think your customers will enjoy getting dozens of cold calls every day for insurance, alarm systems, repair contractors etc.who insist on a long conversation while you’re driving down the road, or hundreds of spam emails that nobody can unsubscribe to? Or how about the three text messages and three emails to remind you of a doctor appointment you made yesterday…like really…yep…now days they only way is just don’t give out your email…unless you have to…kinda makes me miss the '70’s…
Well every hi report software available is going to sell out to a larger company as soon as the original owners get the right opportunity.
Some of those bigger companies will data mine.
So what’s the answer? Yellow note pads and Polaroid? I think not.
I know a bunch of hg guys jumped to scribeware, which honestly looks pretty good but mark my words as soon as the “right” offer comes along they will be sold also.
I personally do not intend to invest the time to relearn a new system and modify it to meet our needs every time the situation changes.
As far as I know, so far, the insurance aspect of HG is an opt-in for customers. And I have received zero complaints from my clients.
Heck half of them probably gave up their info to Zillow, Redfin or Trulia before they even got to the point of needing a home inspection.
