Make sure you join the right association.

The little Minneapolis associatin's recent assertion that it won some sort of victory against the defendant, the National Association of Certified Home Inspectors, Inc is not exactly correct. The defendant named in this very recent motion did not appear in court to fight it at all, giving the Judge no choice. The defendant didn’t even respond to it. Why? Because the defendant agreed with the motion and did not have much of problem with it.

In a previously settled-out-of-court complaint, the little Minneapolis association, which is run by a for-profit company oddly owned by the association’s own Executive Director, claimed that there existed confusion between the 2 organizations and claimed that some inspectors who accidentally joined their Minneapolis association were later displeased to discover that they could not access any www.nachi.org/benefits.htm. The inspector victims of this confusion were even more displeased to discover that they had to fulfill www.nachi.org/membership.htm and pay again to join the right association if they wanted to access and enjoy the member benefits they sought. The embarrassment this was causing the little Minneapolis association is quite understandable.

Both parties, each desiring to reduce this alleged confusion, entered into an mutual agreement (not a forced court order) whereby the National Association of Certified Home Inspectors, Inc., though not agreeing to change its corporate name or any website domain name (URL) it used, would however agree to speed up its pre-existing plan begun in 2001, to go international.  Part of our willingness was fueled by the resistance experienced in using the "N" word, "National" in other countries where the word means U.S.-only, nationalism, and/or NAZI-ism.  And part was fueled by a pre-existing plan to upgrade our logo design to something more emblem or certification seal-like for member marketing purposes.  The mutual agreement included an offer by the National Association of Certified Home Inspectors, Inc. to arrange to change on nachi.org, the logo and acronym, which was but one letter different than the little Minneapolis association’s acronym.  This change was made by adding the letters “Inter” in front of its acronym so that it reads "InterNACHI."  These brand-maintained changes have been made on all 215,000 webpages.