O.K. So I get this call on Tuesday from a woman asking me to inspect a home that she is considering buying. It was a little home, waaaayyyyyyy out in the country, probably, oh about 30-35 miles outside of my service area, but I figured well, it's a little slow right now, what the heck, I'll go ahead and do it. I took all of her information down, name, phone number etc. Then got the skinny on the house, a 1936 1 1/2 story home with a basement, approx 1200 sq ft. out in BFE. I got the address from her and repeated it several times to make sure, as it was one of "those" addresses, you know like, 105236 N. E. County Rd. 6000 W. SE. Confirmed everything for Thursday and I was good to go.

Thursday comes, I get the truck all ready and gassed up for my 1 1/2 hour jaunt to the country. I've got my Yahoo map printout with complete step by step directions on how to get there....and I'm off. An hour and a half later as I am driving down this gravel road in the middle of a cornfield, I began to get a sinking feeling in my stomach that something wasn't right. Oh I found the road all right and there actually were some homes out here. Only problem was, that none of them had the address that I was looking for. Oh I found the before address, and the after address, but what was in between was a cornfield.

So after making crop circles for about 1/2 hour, I called the client to verify everything, only to get their answering machine. So I left a very nice, professional message stating that I was out in the middle of nowhere, making crop circles, and could not locate their house, PLEASE call me back. Another 1/2 hour, 45 minutes later, no call back, having gone down every gravel road, getting stuck in a mud pit for 15 minutes, burned a half a tank of gas,and a 1/2 pack of cigarettes later, I decided to give up the fight and drag my weary behind back to the city.

I get back home, tired, beaten down, and needing a car wash badly to get all of the mud and corn husks off the side of my truck. I get greeted by my wonderful wife (god bless having a wonderful woman by your side) who was the voice of reason, telling me it could have been worse, and things weren't all THAT bad. And she was right.

Fast forward to this morning, I check my phone and I have a voice mail. Can you guess who it was? You got it, my clients husband calling me back 5 1/2 hours after the inspection was to take place. Sounding angry he told  me that they waited at the house for 2 hours for me and proceeded to tell me how unhappy he was with me. The next words out of his mouth just made my jaw drop, he said, and I quote...."If you call us back, we'll give you the right address this time and directions on how to get there, so lets do it tomorrow or Saturday. If you don't call me back, I'll just call someone else to do it"

Needless to say, they will be getting someone else to do this job.

Lessons learned from me?

• Always call back and confirm appointment, address and phone number
• Know your service area, and stick to it
• When applied with mud, corn husks are an excellent alternative to bricks as a building material

Anyone else out there have a similar story? Please share.

Peace

Mike Chamberlain
MC2 Home Inspections, Indianapolis
http://www.mc2inspections.com/