I cannot tell you how MANY times I have seen horror stories since I got into the "Home Inspection" business. I had to get out because there were too many crooks. But this last bit of crookery has me shaking my head yet again. I will TRY to be brief in this initial post.

The Province of New Brunswick and the Canuck government have energy upgrade programs. Example... new $4000 oil furnace that qualifies can get you $1125 back from the governments.

Get an energy audit by a certfied company, get the recommended work done, get another audit, get the coin. The audits cost $50 and the governments pay the rest.

So, I got one done at Mum's and at my house.

Holy crap! The incompetency of the young makeanickel engineer was apalling. The guy didn't even bring a ladder for inspecting the attic. Told me to lower my water heater temp to 120F... when I attempted to help the lad by explaining that anything below 140F could be a problem as it's the pasteurization point, he got a puzzled look on his face. The boy had never heard of Louis pasteur. And it got worse from there! Seriously worse. I even had to get him to rewrite one audit report because he messed it up so bad.

Skip ahead.

I had 4 insulation contractors quote on the attic upgrades. One guy knew what he was doing and gave me a reasonable price. One guy was an idiot. Two were crooks... oh, we'll have to do this too and then, because of this, we will have to do that and then, well, we can't guarantee that this and that.... arrrgggghhhhh! And, it was all crap to begin with.

Example.... well, if we don't do this and that, no sense of doing that and this, so we'll just blow in the insulation and it won't matter if it covers the soffits because you won't be able to provide proper ventilation in the future because you won't be able to access the soffits to install ventilation.

That's when I said, "Oh. Okay. Thanks for explaining that. I guess I just didn't understand. I hope you can get those price quotations to me soon so we can schedule the work." And away he went in his 2010 Ford Super Duty King Ranch Super Crew pickup truck.

What I wanted to say was, "See that case over there. It has a new technically innovative power tool in it... it's called a drill you fucking asshole... get out of my house you crook!" I wouldn't have told him about the ladder, tho. No need of showing off, eh?

I have an 11 year old Ford extended cab scratched up hole in the catalyctic converter transmission making a scarey noise truck... but I sleep well at night knowing I am an honest man.

But, it WAS a nice truck. >;-)

So, anyone else got any unusual stories about finding ONE competent, honest man?