You may be wondering what in the heck is Steven talking about this time about Maintaining Credibility and Independence as a Vehicle Inspector.
Credibility as a vehicle inspection company is everything. Our clients must trust us to provide an unbiased and independent vehicle condition report back to them so they can make an informed purchase decision off the information we have provided. There are many other vehicle inspection companies in our industry that have grayed these credibility and independence lines but still allude to their clients that they are providing an independent inspection. While some of them may be upholding what they say, many are not and buyers are being duped and receiving false inspection reports.
As a mobile vehicle inspector that performs a ton of inspections at mostly dealership locations a vehicle inspector we were two difference hats when we inspect a vehicle for clients. Which at times can be tricky as dealers and sellers are not obligated to allow us to inspect the vehicle since it is technically “their car”. We don’t want to slam the seller unfairly just so we can “look good” in our inspection report and ruin the sale but at the same time we must present the car in its true condition. Sometimes a vehicle presents itself as a diamond in the rough and is near flawless however, the other times it may be a scratched up hunk of steel that we do have to notate everything we find. The thing we tell buyers and sellers alike is that we represent the vehicle based on it’s current condition, age and mileage and our job is to relay that information to our client, unfortunately a rough vehicle will also look rough on paper and in photos but our notations also take into account the mileage and age of the vehicle at the time of inspection.
The first hat we wear and the most important one is to act in the interest of our customer (most of the time the potential buyer of the vehicle). This means we will represent the vehicle in our inspection report as the vehicle’s true condition. If that means it has several scratches or poor repair, our report will show that.
The second hat we wear at mobile inspectors is to be nice and respectful during our inspection at the seller’s location as so we are allowed to return the next time we are asked to inspect a vehicle there. What this means is although we will mark-up the vehicle as its true condition and each item will be notated in the report, we will not be rude, pushy or demanding to the seller or dealership. There have been times when we are “not allowed” to inspect a vehicle at a certain location due to a previous vehicle we have inspected there. There are also times when a dealers will not allow the vehicle to leave the lot on a test drive. In these instances we inform our customers of the issue and if we are told we are “not allowed” to inspect the vehicle we will refund you money, if we do inspect the vehicle and cannot test drive it, a reason will be provided in the Test Drive section of the inspection report.
We often get the question of “should I hire the dealership recommended vehicle inspector’? Hiring the dealer “recommended” vehicle inspector would be like going the “recommended” Personal Injury Attorney that your insurance company suggest… Likely not a good choice. This is why we never ask a dealership to “recommend” TDT to any of their clients. We suggestively tell them to Google the keywords that we will show up for in the search engines instead of providing our name. We want our customers to feel as if they have made a decision to hire us through their own research and knowledge. This is one of the many ways we maintain our independence in the vehicle inspection industry.
If you are looking for a truly independent and unbiased vehicle inspector to help ensure you are about to purchase a safe and reliable vehicle please feel free to fully examine our background, history and references throughout our website. We have a 5 Star Rating on Yelp and an A+ Rating with the BBB… This is unheard of in our industry but it is an achievement we have received for being honest, truthful and independent for each inspection we provide to our customers.
