I paid a professional engineer to do a snag for me and I may as well have done it myself - he was pretty useless.
He was actually recommended to me to do a valuation report (for the mortgage) - the bank themselves gave me his card and said they had accepted valuation reports off him in the past and would be happy to accept one from him again. I rang him up and he said itd be 100 for a valuation report and 200 for a snag but he'd do both for 250. I agreed and he showed up at the arranged time/date.
I got suspicious when he said to me 'we'll do the valuation report first eh?', took out his phone, rang the estate agents who were selling me the property and said 'hi there - if i were buying one of these places how much would you charge me?'. They told him and he wrote it down on the back of a scrap of paper and said 'ill fill out the (supplied)form for the bank later'. So that was 100 euros worth of a valuation report
He proceeded onto the snag. By sheer bad luck the builders had switched the water on that day and the tap in my kitchen was on and the pipe underneath was not in existance so there was water everywhere. The builders had stopped me on the way in and explained what had happened to me and that they were on their way with a pump etc....
The snag man took no notice of anything else except the water.
He then tapped a few walls and said 'thats grand so - Ill fax the snag list to you'.
I paid him 250 euro feeling suspiciously 'done' - he then asked me for a lift to his next job, even though it was not in the direction I was going
He faxed the snag next morning. It was hand written in TERRIBLE handwriting on headed paper (some engineers office name on it). It was practically impossible to read it plus loads of the points listed were just standard things like 'all surfaces to be cleaned'. There was a big section on the unfortunate water incident.
I went back a week later and done my own snag and included all the stuff that he hadnt mentioned at all.
Ive never had a problem since I moved in and if I knew then what I knew now I would never have gotten this guy to snag. I think the valuation report thing was a bit of a joke too but however.......