Lots of good examples in here: “It’ll Cost Us $100K To Make It ‘Legal'”: Homeowners Are Sharing The Entirely Avoidable Errors They Made When Buying Their Homes
So many good examples in the above – we bought a home that had, mysteriously, “air fresheners” in every room. Hadn’t thought about it since they had pets. But they were using it to cover up the musty odor of mold, caused by plumbing leaks, from plumbing projects the incompetent DIY home seller had made. Turned out he also did the electrical, buried under the insulation. We had to hire 28 hours of electrician time to repair the mess – the two electricians said it was the worst and most dangerous case of homeowner DIY wiring they had seen in a combined 40+ years of experience. We had to spend about $20k on repairs to bring the property into a safe state – and were unable to use the “master bedroom” for a couple of months until the entire bathroom was ripped out and replaced.
Home inspectors? We hired one at one home who, we later learned, had been paid off by the buyer’s agent (ours!) in a kick back arrangement to intentionally overlook extremely serious and life-threatening defects (obvious cracks in the furnace flue pipe venting into the house). We reached a settlement with the home inspector. Always be present during home inspections, be very skeptical and ask many questions. Be willing to look under sinks yourself, look inside the attic, and so on.
Yesterday I had a bad experience with Priceline.com to the extent that I requested my account be deleted. I will not use 3rd party booking services again. They are designed to entrap you into making unfortunate choices, thinking you are saving money. If something goes wrong, fixing it can be impossible.
It made me realize that a LOT of business practices are intentionally designed to ensnare customers into things that are not in the customer’s interest.
The best we can do is avoid businesses that do this – unfortunately, this practice is becoming standard and avoiding it is hard.
