You’re in a happy holiday mood and thinking about building an extra room or remodeling the kitchen or bathroom in your home or apartment next year.
Before you hire a contractor, be aware the project may turn into your biggest nightmare. Shoddy work or fraud by contractors is the biggest complaint by U.S. consumers, according to the nation’s 137 Better Business Bureaus. Inquiries and complaints about home improvements and remodeling contractors have risen 60 percent since 1991 and currently amount to 1.1 million a year, more than double those about poor financial services, bad treatment at retail stores or faulty auto repairs, say the bureaus.
“It’s very easy for people to get taken by dishonest or inept contractors because their lack of skills or time to do it themselves make them so vulnerable,” says Barbara Opotowski, president of the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York.
Indeed, even the savviest people can be duped easily by dishonest or greedy contractors, consumer-rights specialists say. Before you embark on a remodeling project, here are some stories you may want to keep in mind:
In Eagan, Minn., Anthony Falcone, a criminal investigator for the Internal Revenue Service, and his wife, Linda, a tax manager for Northwest Airlines, were defrauded by a contractor that had 26 previous complaints filed against it over the past three years at the Better Business Bureau.
Mrs. Falcone says she and her husband gave the company, Custom Handyman Inc., in St. Paul, Minn., $6,600 in two installments to finish a basement in their home but the company abandoned the job earlier this year.
It cost the Falcones another $10,000 to finish the job–bringing its total cost to $16,600. The Falcones initially got two other bids for the job that were “much higher” than Custom Handyman’s bid.
“What we learned is that if the bid is too good to be true, it’s probably not true,” Mrs. Falcone says.
Custom Handyman doesn’t answer its phones, and the Better Business Bureau says the company has lost its state and local license to operate.
Janice Johnson, director of financial services for accountants Coopers & Lybrand, last August hired a contractor to renovate three bathrooms and a kitchen in her ground floor co-op apartment on New York’s posh Sutton Place. Johnson says the contractor has received $40,000 so far and still has done only demolition work on the apartment.
“I’m living in Beirut,” she says, tripping over paintings and pottery from her kitchen and bathrooms being temporarily kept in her bedroom. Ms. Johnson says the estimate for the project by the contractor has escalated to $200,000 from the initial $120,000, and she has halted the project and is calling in another contractor.
The aborted project has taught Johnson a lesson, she says, adding: “I’m never going to hire a contractor before I can pin down the final figure.”
Thomas Phillips and his wife, who own a co-op apartment in mid-Manhattan, had a contractor disappear with their money.
Several years ago, the couple hired a contractor recommended by a friend to renovate their kitchen and bathroom. The contractor asked for a 50 percent deposit of $8,000 for the project.
Then he failed to show up. After dozens of phone calls, Phillips hired a detective who traced him to his home, where Phillips served him with a court subpoena.
The couple won a judgment, but Phillips says, “We’ve since discovered that he has no assets so we haven’t gotten a penny back.”
Phillips says before hiring a new contractor, he and his wife checked out two of his previous jobs. “We’ll never take a friend’s word again without checking in advance,” says Phillips, the executive vice president of a large New York-based public-relations firm.
June Wall, a 62-year-old Irving, Texas, real-estate agent, says that Fitzgerald Builders in Mesquite, Texas, three years ago built a $7,300-room over an 11-foot-by-14-foot patio behind her home. But the room leaks from the ceiling, walls and windows when it rains.
“Fitzgerald has come back dozens of times to caulk the cracks in the room, but it continues to leak,” says Wall, whose husband, James, 64, is an officer with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department.
Now Fitzgerald won’t return phone calls from the Walls, who say two other builders have told them the room must be torn down to the studs and rebuilt to stop the leaks. “We just don’t have the money to take Fitzgerald to court,” Mrs. Wall says.
Nick Fitzgerald, who runs the company, concedes that the building still leaks. But, he says, the water is condensing on the room’s metal frame because the Walls have installed a cooling system there.
“We had planned to spend a lot of our retirement years in the room, where we planned to put a hot tub and a lot of plants,” says Mrs. Wall.
“Now it’s just an eyesore that keeps us up at night, putting pots on the floor when it rains.”
In New Jersey, contractor fraud is rampant. Mary White of Cape May, N.J., was victimized several years ago by a roofer from Ocean City, N.J., who took a $2,000 deposit but failed to begin the work.
After she asked for her deposit back, the roofer nonetheless sent workers to do the job. She called the police who finally made the roofer cease work, but not before the roof was torn up.
Ensuing rains caused thousands of dollars worth of damage, White says.
Dan Hill, a building-code-enforcement official in Cape May County, says that the roofer has declared bankruptcy and left the area.
Three jobs in which contractors often do shoddy work involve driveways, chimneys and new windows and doors, says the Better Business Bureau.
In Brooklyn, Francis Myatt, a 75-year-old retiree, says it took American Security Doors Inc. two years to properly install a steel-framed front door on his home.
Company manager Ray Rosenthal admits his company goofed.
“We tried to expand without full-time service personnel and lost customers,” says Rosenthal. “Now we’ve hired more help and solve problems before they happen.”
