Are there ANY contractors who keep appointments?

Pretty much.

You have to seek them like gold nuggets.

Angie?s List

No. It is not the norm, nor is it particularly unusual. The ones who don't show probably couldn't find a polite way to tell you over the phone they don't want your busienss; with the fellow who did show, I'd guess you said something that made hime decide you were not worth the trouble of following up.

This is not going to make me popular here ... but I'm a remodelling contractor, and I get a lot of people who want me to rush right over and give them a free estimate. Even after I give them a ballpark over the phone .. in the hope of establishing that they at least have a realistic budget in mind. Amazingly, they don't believe their project will cost nearly as much as the last ten identical ones did.... why, their brother in law told them not to spend more than five thousand ... on a twenty five thousand dollar project.

I won't make an appointment and not keep it. But I will come to your home, take a look, come to the conclusion that I don't want you or don't want your job .. and vanish. I'm not going to spend several hours costing out a project I have no desire to do.

Why would you not go to him with a sketch of your counter tops, including their dimensions? At his show room you can see any number of edge treatments, quality of granites, sink treatments, etc. And you can see the raw slabs ... and even the saw they use for cutting them.

He can give you a good estimate right there, zip out and make a template at a convenient time.

No. As I said, my guess would be there is something in your approach that is not sitting well with prospective contractors. But that is a guess only.

HTH

Ken

A contractor will bail out if: a. everything that Ken said. b. the customer talks too much and/or doesn't know what he wants c. the customer hints that the project is worth about half. d. there's something funky at your house, like a botched mess created by the owner or a previous contractor. e. the job is too small. Contractors have "overhead" that you can't imagine, like an hour to get the paint stuff out of the truck and "re-tool" for woodworking or tiling. The highly specialized contractors who have a truck stocked up for a single kind of job, and who charge big rates like plumbers, ... they'll show up when you want.

-B

appointments and

This is Turtle.

Your a what a contractor calls a dry call. A dry call is just another phone number in the phone book looking for a price and the odds of getting it is next to nothing or just maybe get it. Your asking for a mircle to get something done.

Now research the contractors in the area and talk to everybody you know to get a grip on who the respectiable contractors are and pick the one mostly that you heard good responces from and then call him. Tell him up front that you are calling him only and wanted him to do the remodeling job for you did get some good words said about his work. Then say I am not calling a bunch of contractor for a bidding war but you are it on contractors and I want you to give me a price on the work and if I can afford it YOU will do the work. Now I want you to give me a reasoniable bid that would be concidered a reasoniable bid by any other contractor in town. If the bid is reasoniable and i can afford it, you will do the job. Now if you can't do it, Don't want to do it, or Not interested -- tell me now and I will try to find another contractor that will do the items and work I described to you.

Make it clear that he is doing the job if he is just reasoniable on pricing like any other contractor in town. this takes you out of the dry call people and put you in the good customer people. The Dry call people get the run around and get no where.

TURTLE

Last time I dealt with contractors was 2 years ago when I bought a new furnace and A/C.

Called 4 companies. They all came out when they were supposed to, and got back to me promptly with quotes.

Maybe you somehow project that you are not serious.

sounds like it's probably considered too small a job by the local contractors to make money on, had a similar probelm getting a concrete driveway addition poured, called 4 contractors who said they would but never showed up and never called to reschedule

this form of communication is becoming more commonplace in the "modern" world, i.e. no communication or extremely poor communication

put it off for months then mentioned to a friend couldn't get it done

he knew a hungry concrete crew and got the job done in short order

keep trying till you find someone hungry enough, might help to get a friend who knows a contractor who can do it, then you might have some leverage ; )

Welcome to the world of remoldeling! In my last house I spent over $100,000 fixing the place up and had some good and some bad experiences. What you complain about is very common. I got so I would call 10 contractors knowing that maybe 3 or 4 just might call back and probably 2 would come by for a quote. Just keep plugging away. If they are flakes and don't show on time....forget about them...they will be flakes all the way through the project. Just don't get desparate and hire anyone. If they return your call, show on time and are licensed, bonded, insured and have no problems with the licensing board....you may have found a good one. Get a quote with a start and finish time "in writing" and only pay for materials in advance and make certain they are purchased by you directly and not the contractor because if they disappear, you can be liable for them. Good luck with your remodel!!.........Ross

On 1/3/2005 10:08 PM US(ET), Kim took fingers to keys, and typed the following:

If it's anything like where I live, which was recently reported as being the fastest growing county in the state, they're all too busy building new $1,000,000+ homes. You might go over to Lowes or Home Depot and check out their counters and installation schedules. They may have local contractors that work exclusively for them.

based on many experiences, the typical contractor:

has about a third grade education (in america we call this a 9th grade education). nonetheless, their way of doing things (taught to them when they were still young enough to learn, a process which has long since halted) is the ONLY way it will work, and any other way is just insane. questioning anything they say will result in immediate price doubling, or no callbacks.

has child support payments owed to two different women. its hard to think straight with two screaming women calling you all the time asking for the check. so if its near child support payment time they may have never got any of your messages. they're hiding from the phone.

would never DREAM of actually doing the job. they have plans to hire it out, under the table for 10 bucks an hour, to whichever alcoholic or college student answers the phone that week. when you finally do reach them you get some sort of 'well i told this other guy to call you back and schedule a time' answer.

has or had a coke problem.

fortunately, if you look hard enough you can find an atypical contractor. unfortunately this is a long process.

randy

Pretty much.>>

As a Southwesterner (California) returning to her ancestral stoping grounds in the deep South , you have just made me feel much better, although unfortunately I can't give you a magical formula, This sort of behaviour drives me round the bend. In three years I have found three craftsman who come when they said and did what they sign ned up for. I thought it was maybe cultural difference, as when I lived in and reported from pre-war Beirut. There just seems to be a deep streak of larceny ($1,ooo,oo camera and add-ons lost), laziness and unreliability in the building trades. You have my profound sympathy and the hope that hope your grandchildren will live and build in a better world.

Leslie

zemedelec

'My husband has been remodeling our house himself for the past 5 years. On the 3 occasions we needed someone to do some work, 2 out of 3 made appointments and didn't show up or call, and one showed up once, then never showed up again. Is this the norm?'

ME: This is pretty much the norm in the Trades from what ive experienced also.

It's much cheaper just to buy the parts yourself and find whatever Mexicans you can and hire them to do it anyway.

snipped-for-privacy@aol.comnojunk (Kim) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m23.aol.com:

Getting them to even CALL BACK or else SHOW UP ! People are lazy these days and don't even want to work. They just will appear and wave their hands around and charge you a lot of money.

I know that this was suppose to be a thread complaining about contractors but I've been contracting on the side for years and have found that the same complaint you have about the contractors goes for the people looking for contractors, I will not work for anyone that has not been referred by another one of my respected clients. My clients know that when they refer a friend if they turn out to be a "loser" it affects their reputation and in the past 5 years I haven't had only one dud. I agree with the other contractors who are sick of pricing jobs only to find out the clients wanted to just do the work themselves or figure out what to pay their brother in law. I've gotten to the point where even I believe my rates are crazy but it keeps the duds from even asking me to take a look at their job.

I think that there need to be more honesty and respect from the client and the contractors. If you don't know what you want tell them, this means more work for us. If you want a ball park figure just tell us the truth and a lot of the time we will help out. Meet us half way by coming to out location and save both of us a lot of hassle.

I concur with everything that Ken and B said. Homeowners feel empowered now from watching too many home improvement shows where it only takes an hour to remodel a kitchen and from the proliferation of home improvement stores that provide 1% of the materials available with salespeople giving out uninformed advice.

I'm an electrical contractor who does return phone calls and who does show up when expected. I do try and give out ball park estimates over the phone to keep from wasting my time on first time homeowners who get sticker shock when they find out how much it costs to do work.

I don't mind giving out a competitive bid price, but the customer should do his or her homework first. They should know exactly what they want. They should have the space in question ready to be worked in (If it is existing). They should have some written specifications regarding materials and time frame and anything else that they consider important. They should have a drawing with locations of lights, outlets, switches, alarms, and anything else that needs wiring along with dimensions of the room and heights for the devices. The drawing does not need to be done by an architect or engineer. A simple drawing on graph paper is fine.

I don't like to go out at night after dinner to meet a husband and wife and their three kids and two barking dogs only to find that the customer doesn't know what they want. For example: CUSTOMER: "We would like to put some more lights in this room. It's too dark don't you think"? ME: "What kind of lights do you want"? CUSTOMER: "We don't know, what do you think"? ME: "What do you use the room for"? CUSTOMER: "Right now it is an extra family room, but we may make it a guest room next year". ME: "So do you want lighting for a family room or for a bedroom"? CUSTOMER: "What do you think, how about a ceiling fan"? ME: "Is that what you want, a ceiling fan"? CUSTOMER: "Well my mother has one".

I think you get the picture. Now picture the above scenario taking place in the room in question filled with furniture and kids toys with constant interruptions by young children and dogs. Obstacles that will make any work in that room precarious and slow.

Now I call and give the above couple two prices; one for recessed lights and one for a ceiling fan. They say that they want to think about it. I never hear from them again.

Needless to say I am in business to make money. Giving out estimates is not profitable unless I get the job.

John Grabowski

"Noozer" wrote on 04 Jan 2005:

This gets to the crux of the problem. There just aren't enough contractors out there. Despite the fact that remodeling and construction are highly satisfying jobs most of the time, no one wants their children to grow up to be cowboys...er, contractors. Let them fix computers and networks and such.

The consequence is that there's no good contractor out there who doesn't have more business than he or she can handle. If it's a small contractor who swings a hammer during the day and does estimates during the evenings, it's especially hard to spend an hour with a potential client knowing that the likelihood of actually getting the work is slim or none.

And if the contractor wants to hire help, it will be VERY difficult to find someone who will show up for work on time every day and is willing to learn. And if the contractor does find someone who will show up, can read and do simple math, and is willing to learn, once that person is trained they either want to go in business for themselves or they get lured away by another contractor desperate for help.

Bottom line - this is not going to be an easy problem to solve. Home builders address it by building houses in a factory setting and trucking the work to a building site. A decline in the new housing market will direct more workers to remodeling. And as prices for quality work go up, more and more people will consider a contracting career.

But that's no help for the job you want to start next month.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this thread: The really good contractors are snowed under with work. So they don't answer their phone messages or don't come out for an estimate.

It works like this. The contractors work is so good that the current homeowners has them do some extra work; then the homowners family members hear and see how good he is and has him do some work for them and then the homeowners friends hear how good he is and want something else done. Very quickly, the guy is completely booked up for years.

So when someone doesn't show up or answer his phone, he is probably ten times the contractor that the guy that shows up is.

PJ

EXCELLENT reply, Turtle.!!! I get so tired of losers calling every company in the phone book for free quotes and especially free information!

I hate customers if it wasn't for their money I would drop them all..

Rich