I would highly recommend people to stay away from the company if you are buying an old house or big house. First, they spent very little time inspecting the house. Mine is over 4,000 sq. ft., and the inspector spent a little over an hour to finish all the inspection. I shared my bad experience (as I will outline here) with all my friends. It turned out one of my neighbors used them when they first moved to Oakwood, and he said the company's inspector used half an hour. Given that, it is not surprising that they missed many things during the inspection. However, missing things are not bad enough. How they handle after-inspection customer service is the reason that I gave them 1 star.
They missed several leaks from the house. They missed a basement leak, which I was able to discover right after my move-in. That was fixed and not much damage incurred. However, they missed the leak from first floor, which costed us a fortune. The pipe under the sink was leaking and they didn't check it. The leak caused the first-floor hardwood floor to be soaked and broken. The water leaked to the basement, causing the issues with electric lines between basement and first floor. I had to hire people to fix the hardwood (as of today I still couldn't find anyone to do the job) as well as hire electrician to fix the power lines. What really pissed off me is how the inspector and the company's owner handle my complaints. When the inspector answered my phone about the leak, the first thing he said was there could be many things happened between inspection and move-in date, anyone could break the pipe and make it leak. I said the house was vacant, and his response was "it could be the appraiser who turned on the water and make the leak". I was shocked by his response. I asked around, and almost everyone told me there was no reason for an appraiser to turn on the water for anything. He had no interest in fixing the mistake he caused, nor admitting it had anything to do with him. He showed me the picture that he checked the facet, but he didn't check the under-sink at all, as if he did, he would see the leak right away. By the end, he told me that it is written in their report that for a house at this age, the water leakage should be expected, and the homeowner should check all the sink to make sure there was no leaks. In another word, their inspection didn't cover any water leakage, as for the old house, there is no need for them to check, there must be leaks.
Then, there was two beehives in balcony above my front door. There were some bees flying around the balcony all the time, but he didn't even bother to check. I spent over $1,000 to hire beekeepers to remove the beehives and have a handyman fix the balcony. When I pointed it to the inspector, what he said was "It was the past owner's problem, they tried to hide the beehives from being visible." Maybe I was wrong, but my impression was the reason for hiring an inspector is to discover the issues that the seller tried to hide. So advice for the reader, if you try to identify issues with a house, don't expect this company to uncover it.
Lastly, there was mold problem in the basement. They said they don't cover mold detection. So in one word, if your house have any issues after the inspection, it had nothing to do with them. It has to do with the age of the house, the seller, or yourself - according to this company.
Finally, last word. If you are unfortunate like me to hire them, don't talk to the owner if you have any issues. It just will make your day worse. The owner basically said the same thing as their inspector - that is they had nothing wrong, any issues that you have with your house are after the inspection. During the conversation, the worst is that when I told him that I will post this review online, he said you can post anything you like, but I will rebuttal with anything I like. His attitude towards their customer was absolutely the worst that I can get from any company.
I just saw similar reviews about the water leakage and how the company said water leaks are expected from old house. I guess that is why they put it in the report so that they don't need to check any water leaks. I regretted a lot for not reading all the reviews. I hope you won't make the same mistake! read more
