Fraudulent Contractor Creates Home Remodeling Nightmare
It wasn't that long ago, when I heard a story about a
fraudulent contractor who created a home remodeling nightmare for his
customer. When I'm talking about a fraudulent contractor, I would like
to point something out here, this person was not a licensed contractor
and this was only half of the problem.
You don't need to be a licensed contractor to be a moral and decent
person. I have met plenty of people who work in the construction
business who aren't licensed contractors and do side jobs to make extra
money and they have no desire to ever become contractors or rip anyone
off.
This fraudulent contractor of course misled his clients in more than one
way. First he told the homeowners that he was a licensed contractor and
had been working for over 25 years remodeling kitchens. He told the
homeowners everything that they wanted to hear, except for the down
payment that he was requesting.
He made everything sound legitimate, including his reasons for why he
needed half of the money upfront. He told them that he had a couple of
other jobs going and was short on funds at the time. If the homeowners
gave him enough money upfront, he could order the cabinets and other
materials that were necessary to complete the kitchen remodel.
Needless to say, you never give anyone that much money upfront. It's
illegal and licensed contractors are only allowed to ask for 10% of the
job or a maximum of $1000, upon signing the contract. There are other
methods that can be used, if you're contractor needs money to order
materials, you could always pay for the materials and make sure that
they are only delivered, only to your property.
This isn't what happened, and the homeowners ended up in the middle of a
remodeling nightmare. The fraudulent contractor did eventually finish
the job, but it didn't look anything like he had promised the
homeowners.
This isn't the first time that something like this happened and if
you're a homeowner, I would recommend that you check your contractors
out. If the state that you live in has a contractors licensing board,
you can contact them by phone or over the Internet, to make sure that
you're contractor is actually a contractor.
Don't let something like this happen to you.