Did anybody see the report on contractor ripoffs on Dateline NBC, Sunday night. It was pretty scary. Especially, the stories where the homeowner had done the right thing by getting references, signed contract, etc but still got taken to the cleaners. Years ago, while selling kitchen and bath remodeling for Sears in Arizona, I had several calls to finish up after the original contractor had , either, taken the deposit and never came back, or, in one case started the job, got money for the rest of the job, had the materials delivered, picked up the materials and moved back to Mexico, leaving the homeowner with a concrete block shell where he had hoped to have a new kitchen. In one of the NBC stories, a contractor had taken two separate customers for several hundreds of thousands of dollars and then walked off the job leaving the homes nowhere near completion. NBC found the contractor working on a third home where, apparently he had tried the same thing but the customer nipped it in the bud but was forced to hire the contractor to continue on the job as a job supervisor to finish the construction (they controlled the money, then). When the customer agreed to an interview with NBC, the contractor threatened to walk off the job if they talked to NBC, so they backed out. I think all of this happened in California, so perhaps it was to be expected. Seems that California is the home of the "customer ripoff"...even Sears got caught there in a couple of scams.
Tom G.