A Guide To Choosing a Good Building Contractor
A Guide To Choosing a Good Building Contractor
A Guide To Choosing a Good Building Contractor
Choosing the right building contractor for your home improvement or building project is a crucial part of the success of any large building project so why do homeowners continue to hire useless thieving building contractors?
Anybody Can Call Himself a Building Contractor
Take Pat for instance, loves his music, likes to smoke a bit of weed every day, lives with his mum and has an old blue van with the name "Able Building Contractors" on the side. Its a glowing description for someone who regularly gets large wads of cash from homeowners for jobs that he knows he will never finish.
Pat used to be a laborer for another building firm and most of what he knows about building he picked up whilst laboring. Pat is very likeable and gets along well with everybody. For that reason people are happy to give him the keys to their home and go off to work confident that Pat will get the job done...
It's a Familiar Story So Why Don't We Get The Message?
There are Pats in every community that are more than happy to exploit opportunities and gullible homeowners and the question you have to ask at this stage is why do they continue to get away with it when homeowners are constantly warned with tv shows like Rogue Traders and a variety of other shows highlighting the same problem?
Why Are UK Homeowners So Stupid?
It might seem a bit harsh to refer to UK homeowners as stupid but in light of the evidence one can't help think that they create their own misfortune merely because they don't bother to check out who they are going to do business with.
On smaller jobs up to about 10,000 most of the problems can be avoided if the homeowner was to carry out a few simple checks such as:
References - at least three references for customers who had similar work done. Give them a call and if possible go and see the work for your self.
Qualifications - Does he have any certification or qualifications from trade organizations such as Federation of Master Builders? If yes, call them to verify. If no, ask why?
Find out how long the business has been in operation? Less than 2 years is a series risk as most businesses fail within the first 2 years.
Find out the correct trading address and land line numbers.
Don't be shy about a personal identity check.
No deposit payments - ever.
No cash payments - regardless of excuses.
Set up a payment structure and only pay for completed works or at completed stages that you have agreed.
Don't pay the last bill or sign off the work as completed until you have had time to inspect the works and are satisfied.
On larger projects such as loft conversions, extensions, refurbishments, you could add on some additional security such as:
Building Contract - Set up a building contract
Company or personal credit check
Conclusion
Just remember Pat, our weed smoking laborer who lives off deposit payments and broken dreams. The idea is to avoid him and it's not that hard if you follow some of our advice above - good luck with your project.
You can compare costs for any kind of home improvement works or building services at Contractors Supermarket or Compare Prices Supermarket The UK's leading price comparison site for building services.
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