As you can tell by the rating, mine is a cautionary tale, ladies and gents. I bought a house in may of 2012. The inspector i had used in the past wasn't available the week i needed the inspection done and i didn't want to delay the closing, so my agent game me Tony's number and i scheduled an inspection with him. Tony himself didn't make it, but sent a guy named Larry instead. As the other reviews mentioned, Larry showed up with a tablet that had an online checklist. Unfortunately that was Larry's only claim on professionalism. I chatted with my agent as Larry walked around the house with his tablet for 45 minutes.
Fast forward to closing. Within the first 10 minutes of walking through my new home i notice a large area of discoloration of wooden siding cladding a small balcony. When i touched it my finger went right trough - it was completely rotten. The roofing membrane covering the floor of the balcony was protruding in one giant bubble about a foot wide and three or four feet long. The wooden trusses underneath it were completely rotten as well. I'll see if i can post a few pics. The balcony is on the third level. The walls in the same spot on the two floors below it had water streaks, so it was pretty obvious there was prolonged water damage present. I called Tony and told him about the issue. He sent Larry over who said to me "so what is it worth to ya? 200?" I said it's worth to me whatever it costs to fix it. He talked to Tony and said that clearly i'm not happy with the inspection and they would be willing to refund the $500 fee i paid for it if i sign something saying that would absolve them from any further responsibility. I said no and had my contractor fix the damage, which was very extensive and cost around 10 grand. I showed the bill to Tony, and he tried to argue first that Larry covered the damage in his report (he didn't, the report literally said the balcony was in satisfactory condition), and then that the damage wasn't readily observable and therefore it wasn't reasonable to expect Larry to discover it (it was, Larry walked around on the balcony with a flashlight and told me the roofing membrane on its floor is protruding from sun exposure) . The fact that these two arguments are mutually exclusive escaped him completely. Since neither make any sense, his ultimate defense was the ryder in the inspection contract that limits any claims against them for any reason whatsoever to the $500 fee i paid for it. I did sign it at the end of the inspection.
So here's Tony's business model. Book as many appointments as possible. Hire an incompetent hack like Larry to walk around the house with a tablet for about an hour. Collect $500 per appointment. In most cases nothing major is wrong with the property and he gets to keep the money. When something is wrong, he simply refunds $500, Larry looses an hour of his life (hardly a big loss), and the homeowner is stuck with thousands of dollars worth of damages to fix.
The story doesn't end there. I understand that mistakes happen. Truth is, i would have settled for an apology and an offer to help cover the damages. not even the entire thing, half would do. Instead i basically got an F U from Tony. That didn't sit well with me, so i sued him. I did it for two reasons. One, i wanted to teach him a lesson and make sure this behavior costs him money one way or another, since looking in the mirror every morning apparently is not a sufficient deterrent for him. Secondly and more importantly, i think his business practices should not be legal and are clearly against public policy because unscrupulous and incompetent home inspectors can simply hide behind fine print with impunity.
In the end i lost the original court case and the appeal because the judges couldn't get over the fact that i signed a contract that limited Tony's responsibility to $500 no matter how negligent the inspection may have been. The litigation cost me another 10 grand, but i'm fine with it as i know Tony's legal defense didn't come free either. He'd rather pay his lawyer than do right by his customer, which would have likely cost him a lot less money, incidentally. The only thing i regret is that we didn't win and establish a legal precedent that over time would put people like Tony out of business.
as a side note, this is the only review a have ever written for anything. i signed up for yelp specifically to post it, because 5 stars from two reviews is a rather inaccurate rating for Tony's enterprise. read more