DMI regrets it is no longer able to offer a money-back guarantee, although this is not as unfortunate as it sounds. As a practical matter, more than 98% of windstorm inspection reports for policyholders who have never had one done before will lower their windstorm insurance by more than the cost of the inspection over the following 12 months.
In addition to several actuarial reasons, this is because the initial mitigation credit status on most insurance policies for homes built before the latest building code changes defaults to “unknown” prior to an inspection. Simply by substantiating the precise mitigation features of the home through an inspection, there is usually some benefit to the policyholder that compensates the homeowner for having purchased the inspection.
Nevertheless, some insurance carriers have pointed out that any inspection process in which the fee is in any way contingent on the results of the inspection could be seen as an incentive to distort inspection results, ostensibly to allow the inspection company to avoid having to issue any refunds. As a result, this policy has been discontinued and replaced with DMI’s Satisfaction Guarantee (see below).
