Mr. Bushart What you have been posting makes sense. If I read you correctly Nachi is a vendor driven associaition benefiting the vendors, and the members who can obtain readily, courses, programs, insurance and other goodies. Its a win win situation, no? No one has to be a member, but everyone wants to be a member because the offerings are numerous while the overhead for vendors and Nick is low as it is essentially internet based?
Mr. Harris I love your antagonistic endeavors here, just as much as Rudolfs, and just as much as I enjoy my antagonistic self. Viva la difference!
I think Jim has trade association confused with trade union.
Trade Union: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3A+trade+union
Generally the difference is that a trade association has members from the entire industry. A trade union generally has only the workers (in this case the inspectors as Jim says) as members.
InterNACHI is a trade association, not a trade union.
Mike… Are you the TV home improvement star that some are so jealous of your celebrity status, and knowledge that they feel they need to bash you on this world wide site???
Yes.
The balance between legitimate vendors providing legitimate services…and the members who benefit by them…is the association.
Vendors would scream bloody murder to hear anyone making the ridiculous claim that InterNACHI is a “vendor driven association.”
The vendors are damn near about to hang me!!!
I won’t sell them any advertising space. I won’t let them even have banner ads on our 260 million page website. I won’t take money for ads in www.nachi.org/iqfall2008.htm I won’t let them buy prominence over their competitors in www.InspectorMALL.com I beat the hell out of them and make them give our members exclusive discounts that non-members can’t get anywhere else. If I catch them, even once, offering the same deal to a non-member (and yes we anonymously audit them), I ban them from all InterNACHI sites forever (they have to explain to ASHI members why they can’t give as good a deal as they give to InterNACHI members). I won’t let them run ads on www.nachi.org/chaptersites.htm or www.InspectorLocator.com or www.InspectorNOW.com or www.CorrectInspect.com or www.FindanInspector.us or www.InspectorSEEK.com or www.OverSeeIt.com or any of the other 4,500 sites we control. I won’t let buy ads on this message board either.
Vendor driven? I don’t see it.
Yes, I announce any deals I procure for our member’s benefit, but I don’t collect any ad fees for that, I do it to help members, not vendors.
Anyway, I don’t see many of the www.nachi.org/benefits.htm coming from vendors. In fact, many of the www.nachi.org/benefits.htm are in DIRECT COMPETITION with what the vendors are selling. www.nachi.org/success.htm is nearly all InterNACHI developed and nearly all FREE. Hard for vendors to compete with free!
Like I said, they’re about to hang me.
A vendor driven association? Please.
Legitimate vendors? Clarification of legitimate please?
Mr. Harris No I am not Mike Holmes. My name is speled without a L.
Does this not make us a sales association?
“260 million page website?” Clarification please, that’s quite a number? How did you derive at that number? Clarification please - how can you (Nachi) provide what vendors are providing? I think you are comparing pineapples to watermelons. The vendors provide products, while Nachi provides internet based learning opportunities.
www.nachi.org/education.htm are giving away all the state required/approved continuing education for free… and online no less?
Ya all better read Frank Magdefrau’s post #2 in http://www.nachi.org/forum/showthread.php?t=32018 which he made earlier today.
Vendor driven? Yeah, the vendors are driven right out of business by InterNACHI.
Do Nachi members sit on the Board of Mississippi Home Inspectors?
This is strictly my term and my definition, so bear with me.
Through the course of our work in the field, inspectors will discover various needs…and will seek sources to fill them. For this, the legitimate vendor is available. Website creators, insurance providers, and some (not all) software providers come to mind. These are what I call legitimate vendors.
Through the course of their work as vendors, some of them will attempt to create a need for their product and will endeavor to create a market for it among inspectors who would otherwise not acknowledge it. They may use fear tactics regarding imaginary voluminous lawsuits to sell software, overselling the benefit of a certain tool, or exploiting public fear over organic growths. These are what I call illegitimate vendors.
It is my opinion that our association embraces both.
We have discussed this before in email and other threads. Vendors are good for the association and the members…but not every issue being faced by inspectors can be addressed through a vending resource.
Thanks Nick its been an interesting thread. Have to retire now, off to bed to rise tomorrow to catch up on the overnite posts in this thread. Goodnight Mrs. Calabash wherever you are!
And my long time friend Michael Rowan at InspectionDepot won’t talk to me now for over a year, still mad because we built and gave away the competitor to his certifiedpreownedlisting thing away to InterNACHI members for free: www.MoveInCertified.com
Russell Buchanan of HomeGauge wasn’t happy when we launched a free report uploading service for InterNACHI members http://www.nachi.org/fetchreportfriendlyseal.htm
All the inspector directory companies aren’t too pleased about us building and giving http://www.nachi.org/directories.htm away to all InterNACHI members for free.
The website developers aren’t too pleased about www.InspectorPAGES.com which provides nearly instant, free websites to all members including free hosting forever.
ASTM used to gouge inspectors $59 a pop for EACH use of their lousy commercial SOP until we came up with a better one www.nachi.org/comsop.htm and gave it to the entire industry for free.
I can go on and on, but you get the point.
Vendor driven? My ***!
Please describe NACHI and its relevance to the industry without referencing any activity or benefit provided by any of its for-profit vending associates.
NACHI has certainly provided its own competition to certain vendors and has provided a variety of benefits to the membership.
You forgot to mention the many different forms, contracts, checklists and other useful tools NACHI has provided its members.
Not all of the benefits of membership come through vendors…and being vendor driven, in the way I agreed to the term, did not mean that they were.
Here is where I’ll agree that we are vendor driven to an extent.
If a vendor has a product or service that our members want, I throw InterNACHI’s weight around to get some kind of deal or discount from the vendor. That is essentially how www.InspectorMALL.com came to be. But I do it for the members, not the vendors. As explained in above posts, the vendors usually aren’t very happy with me. I use the fact that we control about 99.9% of the shelf space in the industry to get deals that can’t be acquired by individual members. InterNACHI’s “cut” is refused. Again, we don’t charge for advertising. Instead, we ask the vendor to give our “cut” to the InterNACHI members by way of discount.
Not many know that.
Most vendors play. For example: The reporting software companies are very InterNACHI friendly and so you don’t see us developing reporting software. If a vendor or group of vendors refuses to play… I destroy them. I had a very difficult time getting the schools to give us exclusive discounts. The ones that do I promote, the rest… well… I’m going to bury www.nachi.org/education.htm I’ll give away free, state approved, online CEs to InterNACHI members for free until the schools plywood up their windows. And then after, it will still all be free to InterNACHI members, forever.
To vendors I say… “InterNACHI… get with the program or die.”
