MSFH - Home Inspector Fired In Dispute Over Pay

[Joseph T. Burkeson, CMI]

Home Inspector Fired In Dispute Over Pay

By JOHN W. ALLMAN
The Tampa Tribune

Published: Oct 30, 2007

TAMPA - The state Department of Financial Services is considering legal action against a former My Safe Florida Home inspector.

Specifically, the state wants to stop Gordon Miller, who worked for AmeriPro Inspection Corp., from "potentially threatening or harassing" homeowners, officials said Monday.

Miller, in a Sept. 26 letter to Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, alleged he and other AmeriPro inspectors were not being paid by company owner Michael Rowan.

In the past two weeks, however, Miller began mailing letters to homeowners saying he would get a mechanic's lien against each property he inspected, forcing the respective owners to pay him the $150 inspection fee.

The state said Miller can't secure liens against the properties.

"He's trying to do everything he can to discredit our company," Rowan said Monday.

Rowan doesn't dispute that Miller is owed about $3,500. But he said Miller wasn't paid for all his work because the inspections were not acceptable.

Rowan said problems with Miller's inspections were found when the company did quality-assurance re-inspections, per state requirements. He said Miller also received "a lot of complaints from homeowners," including allegations he inspected houses when no one was home, which is not allowed.

Miller did not respond to two e-mails and a phone call Monday seeking comment.

"If any homeowners feel threatened or harassed, we would urge them to contact their local authorities or our helpline for assistance," Tara Klimek, communications director for Sink, said Monday.

Klimek said program officials have talked to two homeowners who contacted the state about Miller's letter. One of those families, according to documents on file with the state Attorney General's office, is from St. Petersburg.

My Safe Florida Home was created in August 2006 to help homeowners assess whether their houses could withstand a hurricane. The inspections are free. The state, until recently, contracted with 11 firms and paid each $150 for every inspection completed. The firm pays a percentage of the fee to inspectors. To date, there have been a little more than 111,000 inspections performed.

On Monday, the state announced it is cutting ties with four of the 11 firms, including AmeriPro, because they did not meet state standards. A fifth firm was fired two weeks ago for contract violations.

Rowan said Miller did more than 400 inspections for AmeriPro. He said the company is re-inspecting each of those homes.

"We're not saying every inspection is a problem," Rowan said. "We're doing our due-diligence."

A letter from AmeriPro is expected to be mailed today to the affected homeowners.

AmeriPro, based in Jacksonville, recently was audited by the state. The audit found the company failed to keep required documentation on file, including criminal history affidavits for each inspector, negative drug test results, training certification and liability automobile insurance coverage.

Rowan said Monday that Miller was fired two months ago. The state said it wasn't notified until Friday about Miller's termination.

Reporter John W. Allman can be reached at (813) 259-7915 or jallman@tampatrib.com.

[James H. Bushart]

Mike Rowan's company was fired by the State for poor performance.

One of Rowan's hand picked inspectors who managed to meet his high standard of guaranteed quality --- was deemed unworthy of being paid for his work.

It would appear that the State of Florida has come to recognize what many of us had about the former president of CMI.

Now...let's see how the same formula for success that got him canned in Florida works when it is applied to pre-listing inspections as he competes with "Move-In-Certified".

[rwand1]

AmeriPro, based in Jacksonville, recently was audited by the state. The audit found the company failed to keep required documentation on file, including criminal history affidavits for each inspector, negative drug test results, training certification and liability automobile insurance coverage.

Mere formalities!

[James H. Bushart]

Mike Rowan....the leading advocate of higher standards that can be validated...could not validate the qualifications of his own employees.

Every criticism ever made by Rowan against this association and its members has fallen upon him....ten fold.

What a phony.

[Greg Bell]

This just proves that this entire program should be scrapped. Leave it to the private market for homeowners to obtain their insurance discount.

[John McKenna]

Why am I not suprised.?

[Joseph T. Burkeson, CMI]

The Governor conducted a study which concluded the best course of action to take would be the elimination of the WCE's and directly reimbursing the homeowner for the inspections.

It appears that after this debacle the state has come th the conclusion that more training & experience is necessary and now they want at least 2 years of inspection experience for field inspectors and 10 years experience for auditors.

This is all well & good but I contend that the reason the program has been a failure thus far is because the WCE's get to skim the program leaving very little for the inspectors. Some of the WCE's were offering only $50 and keeping $100 for themselves, this is an outrage and a disgrace to the taxpayers of Florida.

[Greg Bell]

I feel for the inspectors that are out in the field doing the work and waiting to get paid. I have to wonder why no one was reviewing the reports so that an inspector didn't do over 400 of them that were wrong. As usual anything involving the government is FUBAR.

[Roy D. Cooke, Sr]

Originally Posted by gbell

I feel for the inspectors that are out in the field doing the work and waiting to get paid. I have to wonder why no one was reviewing the reports so that an inspector didn't do over 400 of them that were wrong. As usual anything involving the government is FUBAR.

Where they wrong ,could this just be an excuse to not have to pay out money?

... Cookie

[Joseph T. Burkeson, CMI]

Originally Posted by rcooke

Where they wrong ,could this just be an excuse to not have to pay out money?

... Cookie

Most WCE's required their inspectors to sign contracts which stated that they would get paid only after the WCE got paid and there was a long SNAFU regarding the state making their payments.

[Richard L. Bennett]

I do not understand about not paying??

Even if the inspections were not up to Mike's or state standards, they were done and inspector must be paid.

Now we know to get paid before the inspection is started just like any other inspection.

If I buy a car and it is bad, I still have to pay. Like it or not that is how it is. Then to make it right we have a warrenty

rlb

[Greg Bell]

Hey Dick

I agree. I am so glad that I stayed away from this program. I would have been really pissed if I had jumped through all of the hoops and spent all of the money that these guys did just to get screwed.

[Gerry Beaumont]

Hi to all,

Richard, the states agreement with the WCE's is that they only get paid for properly completed inspections, most of the WCE's contracts with the inspectors states that they will only get paid when the state has accepted the inspection.

All the inspectors are aware of this and signed contracts agreeing to those terms.

Regards

Gerry

[Richard L. Bennett]

And if the WEC does not pay the inspector for a good inspection that the state has accepted then what???

Can we say court time??

Too bad I can't make a contract like that stick to the wall when I get my car repaired

As a side note we all could be doing these inspections through Mike's company.

Wonder how one would feel if one instructed a two day training event and the students payed at the end if they liked the event. Oh and the instructor signed a contract to that effect



rlb

[dmanley]

This is typical when the state takes charge of such a critical program. It reminds me of when my insurance carrier sent out their "inspector" five years ago. Some old greaseball looking like he lived under a pier, driving a dented, rusted old Toyota pickup truck telling me he only got paid $45 for the inspection (Don Meyler Inspections). This guy never got up in my attic to check for truss straps, decking type, size anchor, spacing, the gauge of my hurricane panels or whether my CBS home was reinforced.

The amazing part of this story is when I attended the training class for the MSFH program, the previous class had a 70% FAILURE RATE. That's just rediculous! Seven hours of the most basic structural information and these rejects can't quite get their arms around it. You would think the OIR (Office of Insurance Regulation) would have had a clue that the WCE's were not filtering out the idiots and put in place some form of qualifiers.

This is what happens when people get greedy...400,000 inspections with a good chance of an increase in inspections because of the lack of participation in the matching grant portion of the program. But NO, the WCE's nail huge contracts, under-cut the inspector out of 60% of the fee paid by the state, don't comply with any of the state's mandates then get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Homeinspections Inc., which was one of the casualties of poor performance, had received over $800,000 ($500,000 net) from the state for inspections performed.

What the state should do is allocate the remaining funds for upgrades only. Prioritize for the poor and elderly, present an invoice from an approved vendor, the WMI and elevation photos, then cut the check. Sounds pretty simple, no? Leave the inspections to the homeowner. If this would have been done from the beginning, it would have driven ALL of the $250 million directly in to upgrades. Darn!

But that would be too easy. Let's cloud what could have been a wonderful way to assist those that need it the most with a typical example of how a government agency can screw things up. Oh, did I mention that one of the priorities of the program was to lower wind storm policy premiums? If that's a priority, then mandate that all wind storm policies require a WMI in order to bind or renew. But that's too easy as well.

And...to add insult to injury, South Carolina is getting ready to do the same thing. Revisions to their bill hit last week and is written, for the most part, the same.

Good Grief...!