Has anyone used Recallchek?

[David N. Hubler]

Has anyone tried using Recallchek? and if so what is your opinion of their service? Do you feel the service is a helpful selling tool in your marketing campaign or when you are booking business?

I am considering adding the service to be included in my inspections, but would love to hear some feedback from fellow Nachi members first.

[Jeffrey R. Jonas]

Nope... I normally just go to the CPSC site, and a quick Google search.

[Michael J. Meeker]

Originally Posted by dhubler

Has anyone tried using Recallchek? and if so what is your opinion of their service? Do you feel the service is a helpful selling tool in your marketing campaign or when you are booking business?

I am considering adding the service to be included in my inspections, but would love to hear some feedback from fellow Nachi members first.

What is it?

[David N. Hubler]

It's a service company that you submit the serial numbers of home appliances to, they then do a search and provide a report on any possible recalls along with the procedures to fix.

Thats about all I know...other than they have been emailing me a lot lately with their sales campaign propaganda.

They claim to have over 2500 Home inspection businesses as clients, so I thought I would ask around to get some feedback on them.

Here is their link; http://www.recallchek.com/

A somewhat weak website in my opinion.

[iniquette]

I do what Jeff does, CPSC. I explain to my clients that I cannot possibly find every recall that exists, and they all understand that. I do provide a link in my report for them to view if they have concerns though. I would not pay money to a company to do this type of thing for me, I just don't see how it would add much value to your home inspection.

[Jeffrey R. Jonas]

Originally Posted by iniquette

I do what Jeff does, CPSC. I explain to my clients that I cannot possibly find every recall that exists, and they all understand that. I do provide a link in my report for them to view if they have concerns though. I would not pay money to a company to do this type of thing for me, I just don't see how it would add much value to your home inspection.

Exactly, I explain it is a courtesy, cursory check with no guarantees of locating any recall info. I also include a link to any found recall info.

[David N. Hubler]

Thanks for your input guys...I agree.

[Greg Keene, CPI]

I try to check every appliance for a recall - have found MANY DWs recalled - I use this site: http://www.applianceaid.com/news.html

My clients really like the service. especially when I find a recall.

[Russel Ray]

Originally Posted by iniquette

I explain to my clients that I cannot possibly find every recall that exists

Actually, it's quite easy to find every recall that exists because that's exactly what CPSC is, every recall that exists. In the overall scheme of things at the CPSC, recalls that we as home inspectors are concerned with are actually quite few, but then I'm sure that my definition of "quite few" is far different from others since I have voice recognition software.

Recallcheck probably does exactly what I do, and I have no problem telling anyone that I can find any recall relating to real estate that has been issued by the CPSC. However, why rely on a middle man like recallcheck, which probably charges you, when you can do it easily yourself?

[Billy Boerner]

So what if you missed a recall? What kind of liability would be involved? Am I to assume if the CPSC does not list it then it's safe to say a item has no recalls?

[Russel Ray]

Originally Posted by bboerner

So what if you missed a recall? What kind of liability would be involved? Am I to assume if the CPSC does not list it then it's safe to say a item has no recalls?

It is so easy not to miss a recall because if the CPSC does not list it, then it's safe to say a item has no recalls. And the CPSC web site is soooooooooo easy to use.

[Nathan Thornberry]

Hey guys, P. Nathan Thornberry here from RWS Inspector Services Group. We are the company that developed RecallChek, and I want you to know that we will soon be launching a special deal for InterNACHI members as part of our new vendor relationship.

Just want to post for those home inspectors reading this with a few points, because thus far a few posts have had some inaccuracies that could quite easily cause liability for some of the membership- so don't take this as a sales pitch, I just don't want to see inspectors in harms way. It's bad for all of us.

The consensus of the few posts here seems to be that the CPSC's site is easy to use, and that some inspectors are using it to create a report. Both of these statements may cause issues for some inspectors;

1. The CPSC's site is easy to use, it's just not functional. The data in their system is not layed out into recognizable fields, and in our testing (which we did for almost a year before launching RecallChek), the CPSC's site will miss on the model number more often than not when dealing with recalls of appliances that were sold under multiple brand names.

2. Inspectors that create their own report, are opening themselves up to enormous liability. Besides the fact that they could easily miss a recall on the CPSC, they could just as easily search for the wrong model number. Unlike the CPSC's site, RecallChek automatically finds mistakes in the model numbers reported by inspectors. A zero looks like an O, etc.


So keep that in mind. If you don't want to offer RecallChek, at least let me forward you some of our verbiage to add to your contract to make certain you aren't ever held responsible for these issues. Also, I have all the names of everyone on this page that has posted thus far. Go to my website, register as a user (which obligates you to nothing), and I will give you your first RecallChek report absolutely free. I want you to check it out, in the hopes you will re-post and tell your peers what you think of our report.

Give me or Jamie Ward a call at 1-800-544-8156 if there are any questions.

www.RecallChek.com

[Gary Farnsworth]

Everyone wants to make a dollar.

[Robert Massanova]

I want to thank all of my competitors that aren't using RecallChek. I have been doing reports for every one of my clients since February twelfth, free with a full home inspection. It's cheap- $7, and they do so much more than I used to do with the CPSC. I have seen a couple guys say they are doing CPSC searches and that they can find "every recall easily," and they are completely full of it.

Here's the deal: Tell your next client that you check every major home appliance for Recalls, utilizing a third party that guarantees they will find any outstanding recalls in the home. They will call the next guy and ask him if he does it, and you get the inspection.

I don't know about the 2500 inspectors, but I personally know about 150 inspection companies that are doing it on every full inspection. They are all part of a coaching group I belong to, and every single one of them is giving it raving reviews.

[Bobby G. Michael]

OK you sold me, I'm going to research it.