Great news Nick as I recently got my Virginia License…
Jim
VA only requires 16 hours and we have over 100 that will work for you.
What I love to see are the education providers who spend the time, money and effort to push licensing laws with the intent (and greed) of having the state mandate attendance in their classes - only to be foiled and derailed by free courses provided to inspectors who are smart enough to belong to NACHI.
LOL. Happens, state after state. Look, our intent isn’t to put any vendor out of business. If that was the case (and it isn’t), we’d open up all of www.nachi.org/benefits.htm to non-members. We just try to work for our members as opposed to workin’ them.
In business, all the little things matter… and add up.
Competition is good. When vendors, in order to create profit for themselves, choose to replace marketing and competition with legislation … they deserve to have their evil deeds backfire upon them. Every time you get a course approved that provides a FREE alternative to their classroom they quickly learn for themselves that … licensing solves nothing.
If someone is going to pervert legislation to create a monopoly, we’re going to break it up in the free market by taking the margin out of it. Let them knock themselves out. They keep this up and the entire industry will be InterNACHI.
DOn’t know about your state medical licensing bureau but with a quick google found this-
http://pr.mo.gov/boards/healingarts/discipline/July-September%202011.pdf
At least the public may get a glimpse of what’s up with a practioner they may be considering. And that’s a good thing.
I believe licensing is a good thing for home inspectors also. The post by the Canadian Roy Cooke with the radio phone-in show implies there seem to be lots of problems in the inspection business business, and in construction too. A flashlight, a ladder and a car does not make a home inspector; this happens in unlicensed areas.
People such as yourselves who conceal their real identities as well as their true financial special interests in pushing through such laws like to point out the “bad inspector” when pushing the laws that pad their pockets.
What they will fail to acknowledge in their anonymous posts is how “bad inspectors” in licensed states and provinces still exist and how consumers who trust the license as an indicator of competency and skill … which it never is, anymore than a fishing license assures a good catch … are more at risk after letting their guard down simply because the inspector recommended to them is “licensed”.
I don’t blame you for wanting to hide behind an anonymous name. Most who take the position that you do on these issues need to keep the public from knowing who they are and revealing how they intend to profit from the laws they buy … at the consumer’s risk and expense.
You have to pick your poison:
Do you want an unlicensed industry of mostly really great inspectors, who are self-motivated to get better and better competing with a few bozos who don’t last long and only feed off of consumers who shop price, but with a free market barrier to entry that is very high?
Or do you want a licensed industry of mostly mediocre inspectors with a few great inspector who have difficulty distinguishing themselves from all the rest who all wave the same government-issued credential they got because the barrier to entry is now set so low?
Which do you think is better for inspectors? Which do you think is better for consumers?
Inspectors only spend so much time, energy, and money on their businesses.
In general, in unlicensed states, it is spent on technical education and training. In licensed states, it is spent on sales and marketing.
Which expenditures help consumers the most?
I’m not saying that licensing is horrible, but don’t think that just because a state comes in and mandates that everyone pass the silly NHIE once and mandates that everyone complete a whopping 16 hours of continuing education every two years that all of a sudden we’re all super inspectors. Some of these ding-dong states still steer inspectors toward classroom courses over online courses. That’s proof the government isn’t here to protect consumers: http://www.nachi.org/classroomsharm.htm
Virginia does not license inspectors, it is a voluntary certification