False positive test.

Some especially unscrupulous mold removal companies will employ a very devious trick to convince owners that their property is infested with mold. This is most commonly done by companies that provide both inspection and removal services. During this scam, an inspector will keep several pieces of moldy construction material off-site. Before he comes to inspect your property, he will take samples from his own mold-infested site, and then claim, after a false inspection, that those results came from your property. These can be especially terrifying results, because the materials that he took samples from have likely been encouraged to grow mold. You will then be commanded to get a removal company to your property as soon as possible, whom you will pay thousands of dollars, based on the terrifying result he just gave you.

Avoid It: Like most of these scams, the best way to avoid this is to only work with independent inspectors. These inspectors will ensure that your samples are properly taken, and because they have no motivation to lie to you or cheat you, they are very unlikely to report a false positive result. Another way to make sure that your investigator does not scam you is to be present during the inspection and to ask him to show you where he is taking samples from and the immediate result of those samples.

Some sampling devices, for example, have a special code that corresponds to where and when that specific sample was taken. You can ask your inspector to show you these codes and give you a copy of them, so when your samples come back, you can be sure that the sites that were tested were the ones reported from your property. Once you have the physical results, you can easily check the serial numbers on those results against the serial numbers of the samples. Throughout this process, take specific notes and when all of the results come back, make sure that everything is in order. Your inspector is much less likely to try to scam you if he knows that you are watching what he does and keeping your own records.

 

For more information about mold inspections and removal processes, call us today (406) 755-5322.  We pride ourselves on being an authority on all things mold. If you have a question about this topic, do not hesitate to contact us today.