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Home Contractor
Background Check / Screen Contractor |
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Screening Contractors / Handymen /
Home Repair Workers is one way you can protect yourself
from unlicensed contractors. Each year unlicensed contractors
cause major headaches for homeowners and state and local
investigators. If the contractor is not insured or his/her
insurance is not active you could face huge bills if a worker is
injured on the job and chooses to sue. Your safety may be at
stake if the Contractor has a criminal record. References do not
always give a true picture as they can be biased. To save money
and for your safety you can start by searching for a background
check. |
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Screen Contractor, Background Check
Reports generally search: |
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Credentials of the Contractor. |
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Status of his License. |
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Status of his Insurance. |
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Liens, Judgments and Bankruptcies
Check |
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Any complaints filed against the Contractor |
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Any
awards or Rumors |
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Civil
Court records Search
Real Property Search |
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Basic State Criminal Record Search |
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20 Year Address History |
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*Optional Satisfaction History of the Home Contractor.
Satisfaction history includes the percentage of customers who
have filed complaints against the Home Contractor. |
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According to the National
Association of Consumer Agency Administrators (NACAA) and the
Consumer Federation of America (CFA), Home Contractors garnered
the second highest number of consumer complaints. Dealings with
contractors have been a sore point for consumers, whether
because of a failure to use a written contract, abandonment or
refusal to complete work, poor workmanship and non compliance
with building code requirements. |
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What should I look for in any
Contracts with Home Contractors? |
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When it's time to sign on the dotted line, most contractors will
present you with a boilerplate agreement based on one created by
the American Institute of Architects. It lays out the job's
details, including its scope, materials used and, of course, a
payment schedule. Not surprisingly, according to Mark Levine,
co-author of "The Big Fix-Up," a consumer guide to home
remodeling, some contractors will set up a payment schedule that
lets your money get ahead of the work. "When [a contractor] has
received 50% of the money for 25% of the work, that's when he
stops showing up as often," says Levine. He suggests a plan such
as paying 10% down, 25% when plumbing and electrical work are
done, 25% after cabinets and windows, and 25% for flooring and
painting. "And don't hand him the last 15% on his final day.
It's called 'retainage,' and you should keep it for 30 extra
days just to make sure everything is working the way it should."
In addition, if the job is big enough — say, $50,000 or more —
Levine suggests investing in four hours of attorney fees to
devise a contract that includes a fair payment plan (with
retainage) and stipulates that disputes will be settled through
arbitration (the quick and easy way to do it). |
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How to solicit bids and pay a
Contractor? |
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Mark Zarrilli, a mortgage salesman with Bank of America,
recently decided to enhance his Wall, N.J., home by putting a
new cobblestone-like concrete path around his swimming pool. It
was an $11,000 job, and he paid $7,000 up front to the
contractors — supposedly for materials. "They brought somebody
in to do the preliminary brickwork, then played a duck-and-run
game for three months," says Zarrilli. "They'd tell me the truck
broke down, the wife was sick, the cement company couldn't
deliver. I'll never get my money back." A Monmouth County grand
jury has issued an indictment against the contractor, but
there's now a motion pending to dismiss it. (The contractor's
lawyer, Sean Gertner, claims his client is not guilty of theft
by deception, as charged: "He was thrown off the job.") Mark
Herr, director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs,
calls this alleged scam "spiking the job," and it's one of the
worst possible outcomes when you've signed a contract that
includes a front-loaded payment schedule. "By completing a
little bit of the work, they can face only civil rather than
criminal charges," says Herr. You might get sucked into such a
scenario if your contractor tells you — like Zarrilli's did —
that the up-front cash is for materials. "Typically," says Herr,
"that happens because the guy needs to pay up front for goods
since he has no credit, probably because he screwed up somewhere
else." Your preemptive strategy: Offer to have the materials
delivered to your house and to pay for them C.O.D.
Before hiring a contractor, you'll probably solicit various
bids. What happens when one comes in way lower than the others?
It's natural to think you've lucked out. Not necessarily, says
Lisa Curtis, director of consumer services for the Denver
district attorney's office. Because of the fixed costs of
material and labor, a contractor who offers you a stunningly low
price is suspect. Common tricks include starting the job based
on a bargain-basement price, then telling the customer that the
work is more complicated (and more costly) than originally
thought. Then there's the contractor who quotes a price that
includes windows he knows are sub quality; once the job is under
way, he'll present his client with what is clearly a better
window and talk him into upgrading. "Ultimately," Curtis says,
"you may pay more than you would have with a reputable person
who started off at a reasonably higher price." |
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How do Contractors cut
corners? |
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Unless you have X-ray vision or the time to spend entire
workdays watching your contractors in action, all you may ever
know about your job is whether it looks good. Evelyn Yancoskie,
director of consumer affairs for Delaware County, Pa., knows of
at least one family in her area who got a new roof that, indeed,
looked just fine. But the roof was lacking a key element: An ice
shield, a three-foot-wide rubber lining that's crucial for a
roof in this part of the country. "The contractor figures that
nobody will miss it anyway," says Yancoskie. "But if you get a
cold winter, any water that gets into the gutters will freeze,
back up onto the roof and go underneath the shingles. Without an
ice shield, the ice under the shingles melts and leaks into your
house." Other popular ways that contractors can cut corners
without your knowing it include skimping on insulation, but
packing it in with care so that it looks filled in; leaving out
plumbing lines and pumps that give you hot water fast; and using
lower-quality wood, but laying it beautifully so that you don't
notice. "Guys will use substandard plywood, shingles, siding,"
says Herr. "In situations where homeowners aren't likely to ask
what's going on, contractors use subpar materials." Or just do a
subpar job. Mark Herr
recounts the tale of a family that wanted their kitchen redone
in time for Easter. One night before the holiday, a
subcontractor was sweating to install the garbage disposal. When
asked why the job was giving him so much trouble, the worker
replied, "When they showed me this morning at Home Depot, I
thought I understood." The story points out a big problem: It's
not just your contractor you have to worry about, but the
subcontractors whom he hires to do the actual work. "You need to
know in advance who the subcontractors are," says Herr. "You
can't let the contractor sub anything out without your
permission." |
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Can contractors hold your
house hostage? |
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The number of home-improvement
projects in the U.S. has risen 25% in the past five years,
according to Kermit Baker, director of the Remodeling Futures
Program at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing
Studies. That means contractors are busier than ever — and
because they're juggling so much work, you can pretty much
expect that the schedule for completing your job will go out the
window. "If the contractor's got too many jobs going," says
Pendleton, "the workers might only be in your house for two
hours when they should have been there all day." One way to
guarantee that your job won't stretch to Wagnerian lengths, he
says, is to hire a contractor with a lead person or project
manager, "a working supervisor who is on the job from beginning
to end. That person costs the contractor about $1,000 per week.
If the job drags, the contractor has to pay that person for as
long as he is there. Then it becomes in the contractor's
interest to finish the job." |
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ABCNews -- The father of 14-year-old
Elizabeth Smart, the Utah girl who was abducted from her home in
the middle of the night on June 5, said he would have never
hired handyman Richard Ricci if he had known about his criminal
record. Ricci, who is accused of robbing the Smart's home and
breaking into another home in their neighborhood, has a criminal
record stretching back 29 years. |
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