It has been my extremely bad luck to have been the victim of a scam by my dealings with Meinertech Home Inspections. I am a hobbyist that sold them a large $5000 radio-controlled drone with an expensive camera, which they bought to use to take property photos for their commercial business. The drone was delivered in person and was demonstrated to function perfectly.
No warranty was given or implied by me, because ‘pilot error' can easily cause them to hit something & crash. Anyway, Meinertech readily agreed to these terms. I wanted cash for it but they wanted to use PayPal instead, which I figured was perfectly safe, and so accepted payment that way. But I was to soon learn that it was not safe at all, as they paid for it through a credit card that was attached to their PayPal account. Using this payment method, I was set up for a scam by them, that was carefully planned as ‘insurance' in case they destroyed the item that they had just purchased.
After many hours of flying their new drone, they did indeed hit something and crash, totally destroying it. Mike Meinert of Meinertech then promptly charged it back through their credit card company, claiming the drone was defective. Then the credit card company immediately gave them back the full funds, and charged back those funds to PayPal. And of course, PayPal charged the $5000 back to me and I got stuck with the bill.
Normally a seller can protest the chargeback to the credit card company to dispute the claim. I had all the proper paperwork including a company signed receipt and other paperwork with descriptions, in order to win a dispute. However, because Meinertech involved a credit card that went through their PayPal account, I was isolated from the credit card company and could not even find out which credit card company was involved.
This seemed to be all well planned out and set up by Meinertech Home Inspections, and now I am stuck with the $5000 chargeback and unable to dispute their ridiculous claim. I wish to stress that this orchestrated scam is not illegal. But, such a scam is highly dishonest and very unethical, and all this from a company that is supposed to be ‘trusted' enough to enter into a person's personal space to provide a professional home inspection. I strongly suggest that you do not trust them or you may be cheated like I have been. There are many other competing home inspectors out there that are honest; but from my experience Meinertech is definitely not one of them.