TOPIC: When A Checkbook Is More Than A Checkbook

Last Saturday I had an inspection with someone who is buying the house he has been renting.  No Realtor, no lawyer to review things, just a deal between my client and the seller.  Not my recommended approach, but to each his own.

As always, I ask people how they got my name.  Usually I am referred by someone, a Realtor or another client.  He said, "Checkbook dot org."  I had never heard of them!  You have to subscribe to get into the information, but you can find references on people from virtually every trade as rated by the people who used their services.

He said, "A lot of people only put in negative comments to steer fellow subscribers AWAY from bad contractors.  You can rate the tradesmen with different smiley faces.  Your listing was very unusual.  You had ALL smiley faces!  And people left comments along with their emails so they could be could be contacted.  That is unusual too."

He logged on and showed me many pages of comments about me!  I did not know this was out there.  The comments dated back to 2002.  One, dated 7/14/2008, said, "Extremely valuable person to have when buying a home.  Looked at every nook and crannie and found some very problematic issues.  Saved us from buying an inferior and falsely advertised home."  And they left their email.

It impressed me that people would take the time to say such nice things.  He is right, usually people only put forth that kind of effort to say something negative.  And they feel justified in doing so!  When they take time to compliment another it really says something, at least to me.

My recommendation:  If you are pleased with a service and have the opportunity to publicly praise it, do so!  It really makes someone's day...!

Cool story Jay. Makes you feel good about the job you do for your clients I bet. Nothing like seeing for yourself what others are saying about y our business.

Very cool! I knew a lot of people used Angie's List (they've been running ads on DirecTV now too) but didn't know about checkbook.org.

I don't see any listings for "Home Inspection" categories.  Am I missing it? 

On Angies list or Checkbook.org?

I had never heard of them either. 

Will, you have to be a member to see all the categories.  When he called to set up the inspection, I had tried to look too and could not find anything.  He printed the comments off for me when I arrived.

There must be lots of consumer services out there I have not heard of before...