Ok, So What Is Your Worst Renovation Experience With A Contractor?

Question

I run a Contractor Referral Service in Colorado Springs, CO. Our goal is to keep homeowners from making a mistake in hiring a contractor to work on their home. Often, homeoweners are so concerned with getting a "cheap price", they set themselves up to be ripped-off. I would just like to hear stories from others who have been taken-in by unscrupulous or unqualified contractors across America!

Answer 1

We paid a contractor to remodel our kitchen. He ripped up our kitchen and didn't show up again for months. After several months of complaints, he deilvered the cabinets , but never installed them. The cabinets were never completed and the kitchen doors were never made. He then declared bankruptcy
and tried to renegotiate our contract. We found out he had alot of complaints with the BBB and was using someone elses contractors license. The contractor lost his own license a long time ago.

Answer 2

This isn't exactly what you're looking for, but I work for a national cable television company, and in the past we've contracted out a lot of the grunt work to free up our much better-trained in-house technicians for diagnostic purposes.

Recently, we had a subcontractor drill through a customer's basement wall, straight into the power lines above the breaker box. The basement ceiling caught fire, the drill melted into a puddle of liquid plastic.

A month earlier, a contractor had set the hooks on his ladder incorrectly and placed it on a slope against a house, so that when he climbed it, the ladder shifted and the hooks tore through the subscriber's vinyl siding, ruining about half the siding on that face of the house.

In my experience, contractors lie to customers, claim to know far more than they do, and engage in practices ranging from nonstandard to outright ridiculous.

Needless to say, my regional office is phasing these idiots out very, very rapidly.

Answer 3

Luckily I have no horror stories. Had a brick walkway installed and contractor did an excellent job with the brick work. Even matched color of brick used on house.

One should ALWAYS do a background check when hiring a contractor. Ask for references and inspect jobs that contractor has done and speak with that home owner.

Answer 4

I paid the contractor before the absolute last thing was completed. He never came back. I had to call the manufacturer to refer me to someone to do the installation. This set me back for weeks, waiting for him to do this one last part of the job.