Home Inspections Inc. Missed major issues during home inspection and won't resolve as promised!! Fairfax Virginia

On July 13, 2013, one of the inspectors from Home Inspections Inc., Steve Messerschmidt, completed an inspection which was to help my husband and I have a clear understanding of a property which we were considering to purchase and ultimately ended up closing on.  We trusted Steve to do a good job with inspection and identify any major repairs before closing to minimize unpleasant surprises and difficulties after move-in.

Within hours of being in the house (we closed on August 30, 2013) several major problems were identified that Steve completely missed. Our home has several structural issues that are apparent to an untrained eye to include: a warped wood floor, rotted and molded subfloor, door, door frame which all come from years of water leaking into our home, rotten wood on the two main pillars (and around the front of our home) on our front porch which hold up our widows walk, broken fans in the upstairs and ground level, and all windows are lacking caulk to prevent water leakage, etc.

Steve was ill when arriving at the house and wouldn’t even shake our hands—we don’t know if this illness caused his negligence or if he is just a bad inspector. We are absolutely outraged by the errors on Steve’s part. We have had another inspector, that is also a contractor, come to our house—he was completely appalled that the damage was missed. He provided us with an unofficial quote for the damages (approximately $3500).

Instead of immediately filing complaints, we offered Home Inspections Inc. the opportunity to make it right. I sent an email to the owner of the company, Robert Rust, on September 3, 2013, whom didn’t return my messages or calls for days. Later we learned that he forwarded my messages straight to Steve, his employee. After 9:00 pm a few days after emailing complaints and leaving voicemails, Steve called my husband’s cellphone. It should be common sense that a call after 9:00 pm is unprofessional and inconsiderate. However, that is neither here nor there. The real issue is that we were expecting a call from the owner, not Steve, the employee we had the grievance with. Waiting days for a return phone call after a major complaint is unacceptable in virtually any profession, yet not surprising given our experience with Home Inspections Inc.

In the return call and email messages, we were led to believe a contractor was coming to examine and fix the damages overlooked by Steve. We have several dated emails from Steve Messerschmidt explaining the details of the contractor.   Nonetheless, the contractor never showed and we were provided excuses multiple times to as why.

A full month later and several cancelled appointments later, we were told by Steve that he was no longer handling the issue, but the owner of the company was going to take over and that he might have a contractor to refer to us for repair.

The owner showed up at our home after cancelling two appointments to tell us that he could offer us our money back for the inspection. Why after a month of waiting for answers did it take that long to come to that decision? Why lead us to believe it was going to get fixed?

We hope no one has to deal with this company and the hassle they provide.Do your research when finding a home inspector!!