You’re welcome - and thank you for disclosing that you are aware that the new and inexperienced home inspector you are recruiting to use this “free” software program, among others, will be performing perhaps his very first home inspection and providing information to American Family Insurance Company from that inspection that can be used by them to possibly deny claims, investigate fraud, and determine risk. After all, this is posted in a thread to recruit new members.
But, I will ask again - will that disclosure also be made to the homebuyer who hires such home inspector to provide his report?
What’s wrong is a lack of information that might cause an insurance company to: pay a fraudulent claim, not investigate a fraud, and be unable to determine risk. That harms us all.
Thing is here in Florida I normally get paid to provide accuracy and clarity to insurance underwriters via the (2) Florida Insurance reports, (Four Point and Wind Mitigation), do you expect home inspectors to gather this information and provide it for free?
Of course not. I expect InterNACHI members to pay less for everything in the world. Expenses are a big part of business. For example, if you are running your inspection company on a 25% margin, then from an accounting standpoint, every dollar you save on the expense side is the financial equivalent of going out and earning four dollars.
So if I can save InterNACHI members $1,000… I’ve essentially went out and performed $4,000 worth of inspections for their company, for free, and handed them over the $4,000.
$4,000 can buy you a car in my neighborhood. I feel like Oprah.
The few things we don’t do in-house, such as E&O insurance and reporting software, we procure discounts from the vendors who do provide them so that our members pay less for them.
It is illegal to disclose any (other than that is an immediate threat to the current occupant) information discovered during a home inspection by the home inspector in the state of New York without written consent of the client.
Anyone doing HI’s in NY and using software such as HomeGuage would have to force every client to sign a PIA that gives consent to pass on/disclose/sell their report to the report software company, especially one that happens to be owned by an insurance company!?
Even if they read this so-called disclosure, it doesn’t tell them what is actually happening to the data and how it is to be used by American Family Insurance Company to “enforce” their insurance policies. It only provides them with a website address, requiring a second step to get the full disclosure.
I’m sure there is an honest and transparent reason for this. I just can’t think of it. Nick should be along shortly with one, though. He’s very, very good at this.
He will, however, continue to evade and tap dance around the only question that I posed to him until the thread is so long that no one will read it through to the end. It’s an old Gromicko message board version of “rope-a-dope”.
So Am. Fam. wants our client’s data so they can have an advantage in offering their insurance products. For this they are willing to give us free software. The cheapest package I can find on the HG website is $69 per month. I will assume this is what will be offered for free. If you do 20 inspections per a month, this will save you $3.45 per inspection. So Am. Fam. is offering us $3.45 per inspection to relay our client’s data to them. This seems a little light. HomeAdvisor charges a lot more than that to pass their client’s data on to us. I have a good solution. Before the client can open the report, they must check a box agreeing to their info being shared with Am. Fam. If they agree, they get the solicitation. If they sign up with Am. Fam., the inspector gets $100.
Not sure how I feel about this new partnership or affiliation?
I’ve used HG for 16 years now. Back when HG sold and merged with AmFam I think what 3 or 4 years ago? There was a lot of confusion. I basically did not like the situation where my client was being peddled 3rd party services on the down-low so I stopped using the report upload feature.
I think there is an option for older HG users to either opt in or out of the program. Its called HomeGauge Extra Care
I think new users of HG have to automatically use this program if the use the report upload feature in order for clients to retrieve their reports?
I simply send my clients their reports PDF format to avoid anyone else getting their hands on information. I do use the report upload feature if we have a large project and we are merging 1 inspectors work to another. But I do not consent to any report data sharing and do not use that portion of HG’s system
I really do not care what InterNACHI does. But there has to be a catch here? What’s in it for InterNACHI? Why did InterNACHI choose HG? Many Inspectors try to remain unbiased. I’m interested in seeing how all this develops.
Correct, they changed the opt-in option. Now you’re automatically in. That’s not right. We’ve been through this before with other vendors. I’ve never used their service and never will. This smells like NT.
New HG Inspectors who joined after March 9, 2020 are automatically Extra Care Inspectors, but if you joined before that date, you can opt-in right now. If you’d like to opt-out, please email [email protected].
