The Joys of Home Ownership

Ah, the joy of being woken from a blissful sleep at 6 a.m. to the wonderful phrase, "we're flooded!"

Last night I was informed that our kitchen sink was backed up. Well, I was working on something else at the time and soon forgot about that little project.

The dishwasher started at 2 a.m. and, with no place for the water to drain, overflowed into the kitchen.

The kitchen floor was covered in water and a steady drip was coming from the basement ceiling to the carpet below.

Now, I'm getting pretty good at ripping up carpet after our basement flood two months ago. So, up came the carpet (luckly not as bad as last time.)

The ceiling's not looking so good, however. The drywall will probably have to be replaced or at the very least retaped and painted. Likewise, the slats of wood of the kitchen floor all have a nice up-curve on the sides and ends and so the floor will need to be refinished.

The interesting part about all this that in my board meeting last night at work we were discussing companies that have very high Net Promoter Scores or NPS. An NPS is determined by asking customers to rank, on a scale of 0-10, how likely they are to refer the company to family and friends. 10's and 9's are promoters, 0-6 are detractors, and 7's and 8's are passives. NPS is calculated by subtracting detractors from promoters (P-D=NPS). The theory is that word of mouth advertising is the best type of advertising. Customers who are enthusiastic about your company will sell it to others. Therefore, the more enthusiastic customers you have, the more successful your company will be. Thus high NPS=success.

USAA, a company that provides insurance and financial services to military personnel and their families, consistently has one of the highest scores of all U.S. companies. And, it just so happens that we have USAA home owner's insurance. So now is my big chance to test how good they really are (we've had one other claim for a car accident a few years ago and they did a great job.)

Regardless, with one more flood I may consider replacing the carpet in the basement with linolium.