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Verbal vs written claims

Often, I hear homeowners confused about what a foundation repair salesman tells them vs. what is written in a report and sealed by a licensed design professional. Especially if they contradict each other. This can be confusing to homeowners.

We visited a homeowner in northern Phoenix several years ago. The home had a typical dome heave and cracks in the floor near the apex of the dome. They had tile floors and wanted to re-tile them but were really wanting to not have the new tiles crack. Our engineering team visited the site and subsequently produced a stamped engineered report that recommended drainage improvements and a MoistureLevel® system to control the expanding clays at the highest point of the dome, followed by our composite interlock crack stitch repair for the cracks.

As it turns out, the competition also visited the home and told them that all they really needed was drainage improvements and crack stitch. Since our MoistureLevel® is patented, and they could not offer it, they were conditioned to naysay it. This foundation repair salesman was very convincing and convinced them that he was “just as good as any engineer” Ironically, the homeowner decided to hire us for that more limited scope of work against the recommendations of our licensed professional engineer.

Fast forward a few years. I got a complaint from the Registrar of Contractors via this homeowner because their brand-new tile cracked. In meeting with them, I asked, “why did you not follow the advice of our licensed professional engineer?” His answer was… “well, the salesman from the other company told me that since your engineer is in-house, he is biased.”

There are several problems with this.

  • First, the homeowner failed to realize that an in-house salesman is far more biased than an in-house engineer. The salesman earns a commission for his sales. The engineer, by law, cannot.
  • The homeowner made the typical mistake of falling for a convincing salesman instead of what was on paper arrived at in a scientifically engineered process. A classic example of the Dunning Kruger (Cognitive biases that interfere with foundation inspections) fallacy empowering the less knowledgeable.
  • The biggest problem was that all of the claims of this Foundation repair salesman were verbal…. Leaving no recourse with his statements.

The Inspector from the Registrar’s office pointed out that the homeowner was actually unable to take out his frustrations on the culpable party since nothing was said in writing from this foundation repair salesman…. And that if he had followed the licensed professional engineer’s written recommendations instead of the foundation repair salesman's verbal statements…… he would have likely not been in this pickle.

We don’t expect the homeowner to understand that drainage only improvements when there is a dome heave will likely result in exacerbated increase in the dome and reopening of cracks. When the edge is already drier than the middle, drying out the edge more is likely to increase the differential when nothing is done to dry the middle…. Which is exactly (the middle) where the real problem was… exactly where the MoistureLevel® system proposed by our engineer was proposed.

Perhaps we could have tried to educate him…. but the truth is that he could have relied on the report from our engineering team and been protected from this overconfident salesmen’s verbal claims.

Verbal statements are difficult to hold people accountable for. As it turns out, it ends up being a “he said she said”. Written statements are around forever if you still hold the original document. I recall the story told me by a local structural engineer. He was promised by his employer who was out of state, that if he successfully opened the phoenix office, he would become a partner and memorialized the agreement on a napkin and signed by both parties. Later this napkin was a key document responsible for the engineer winning his case.''

Now you get a simple “report” from a foundation repair company with no recommendations or analysis… just a simple floor elevation survey with some signs of stress. Even if there were any written recommendations, they would not be by a licensed engineer, so they are vacuous. This is accompanied by a plethora of verbal statements about what it means, how severe it is and what the homeowner should do. There is no meat in the written report, just pretty pictures, and diagrams, along with a repair plan and a contract. If you have problems with the advice, well, all you have are verbal statements with no sealed report. If that advice turns out wrong, you will have no recourse.