Reminds me of a load shift that spooked @milesbailey last spring.

Your cousin's story is a good example of why price alone doesn't work... but a really low price is still a huge red flag. A thorough inspection just takes time, and time costs money. That fancy inspector was probably just bad at his job, not a sign that all higher-priced options are a scam. You're right that being thorough is the key, but finding that often means paying a fair rate, not the bottom rate.

Ugh, tell me about it. We tried that same stuff on a forge door and it just fell apart after a week of normal use. The spec sheet says one thing, but real world heat cycling is a whole different beast. It's like they only test it in a perfect lab, not in an actual dirty, vibrating shop. Cost us more in downtime to fix it than we saved buying the fancy blanket.

That "shadowy figures trying doorknobs" thing is so spot on lol. It reminds me of this terrible ad for a car alarm that just played a constant loop of breaking glass and sirens. My neighbor had it and it went off every night for a week, scared the hell out of my cat but never actually told you what the product was.

Honestly it's wild how many things we do the hard way just because that's how we've always done them... like @kevin_west said, people swear by these tools once they try them. You see it with stuff like pressure washers or even just a good pair of work gloves. Makes you wonder what other chores we're all still doing the slow way because we haven't found the right tool yet.