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“The One Where We Fail 4 Times”
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Overview
Janet’s husband had worked for the State Department, so they’d been stationed all over the world. As a result, they had amassed decades worth of items and valuables from around the globe… most of which they stored in their basement.
After her husband’s passing, Janet hired a professional organizer to help her clean her basement. To give you an idea of how much the couple had collected over the years, the organization project took five months!
But there was something in her collection that Janet didn’t know she’d accumulated: Mold… lots and lots of mold.
Winning Trust
Janet called us about her mold problem. In addition to seeing mold, Janet also said she felt ill whenever she went into her basement’s laundry room. So we came to her home and assessed the mold issue in her basement.
Our findings weren’t pretty.
Mold was growing on walls, floors, and all sorts of items. We suspected a leak in the foundation, which meant Janet would have to hire a foundation contractor in addition to hiring us.
The foundation repair alone would have cost her $25K.
Janet had a nice nest egg, so she could easily afford this. But she also had a daughter in San Francisco who trusted us as far as she could throw us. The daughter thought we were trying to take advantage of an elderly woman who lived alone.
We don’t blame her.
Mold remediators get a bad rap for a reason—you can’t trust them! You’d be amazed at the number of mold companies that exaggerate, lie, and deceive to make a quick buck.
But where most mold companies zig, we zag. So we won the daughter’s trust by doing the exact opposite of what she expected…
We told Janet NOT to hire us.
She Wouldn’t Take “No” For An Answer
Janet was going to move into an assisted-living facility soon. Instead of telling her to go forward with the remediation, Valor owner David Myrick advised Janet to skip the project and sell the home as-is.
After all, the home still had cabinets and countertops from the 1960s. Whoever bought the house would be majorly renovating anyway!
Ironically, telling Janet not to hire us is why she insisted on hiring us.
She was still looking for the right assisted-living facility, so she wasn’t sure how long she’d be staying in her current home. That and our willingness to put her best interests over our profits sold her on our company. And she was NOT going to take “no” for an answer.
Our candor also won over Janet’s daughter. So with both Janet’s and her daughter’s blessing, we set to work.
Epic Fail… Times 4
The mold remediation for this project was pretty involved, but we successfully got the job done…
… or so we thought.
After the remediation, we brought in a trusted independent mold tester to inspect our work. Our process has an unprecedented 96% success rate, so we were confident we’d pass with flying colors.
Then the test results came back…
FAIL.
Every room but one passed inspection. That meant there was still an unhealthy amount of mold in that particular area.
“That’s okay,” we thought. “This is one of the 4% of projects that don’t pass the first time. We’ve got this!”
So we deep-cleaned every square inch of the room again and had it retested…
FAIL.
We disposed of more contents in the room that might have harbored mold. We then had the area tested a third time…
FAIL.
The mold tester said the air scrubbers might need readjustment. So we recalibrated them and had the area tested yet again…
FAIL.
Fifth Time’s A Charm
At this point, Janet was a little upset. Not with us… with the mold tester!
Naturally, we weren’t charging Janet for the additional work we were doing. But the mold tester was charging her for each test. As a result, Janet believed the tester was fudging the results and failing us on purpose to make more money.
We told her that wasn’t the case—he was on a shortlist of mold testers we swore by.
So we went back a fifth time. Since we’d already torn open several walls, we were hesitant to do more demolition. But we strongly suspected a little bit of mold was still hiding somewhere within a wall, so we had no choice.
Our hunch proved right.
The next wall we tore out contained a pocket of mold in the baseboard. It was so deeply concealed that no one could have possibly seen it.
We removed the mold and had the area retested AGAIN…
PASS!
Doing What’s Right… Even If It’s Hard
This case study demonstrates that we’ll do what’s in our clients’ best interests. Even if it’s not profitable for us. Even if it takes FIVE TIMES to get the right results.
Both Janet and her daughter were blown away by our honesty and tenacity to fix Janet’s mold problem. But that’s just who we are. We’re in our clients’ corners. Period.
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