Hiring the right contractor can be scary. Unfortunately, you probably have the same skeptical feelings about contractors that you do about used car salesmen. These are actually legitimate fears. They have a bad reputation for a reason. According to this article, the home improvement industry ranked behind only car sales as the most troublesome industry in the US. Here is the 2019 Consumer Complaint Survey Report if you want to do some deeper reading.
So… your worry might be justified. You might be worried that they will run off with your deposit or leave you with a half-finished job. Or, maybe you just can’t stomach the feeling that strangers will be in your house and they might trash the place, leaving you to clean up their mess. These are valid concerns—contractors do this stuff to homeowners all over the US.
Fortunately, there are great contractors out there. AskGer exists to help homeowners find the best contractor for their home, and this article will help equip you with 7 insider questions to ask a contractor before any work gets started. These questions will help you have peace of mind and certainty that you’ve selected the right contractor for your home.
Now, when you ask a contractor if they are licensed, insured, or part of the BBB, they’ll all nod their heads. But let’s be real: those questions are just scratching the surface, and those answers don’t put you at ease, and they certainly don’t give you contractor certainty. Honestly, an A rating at the BBB doesn’t mean much… a few years ago, the BBB actually gave Hamas an A rating! So, how can you ensure that this contractor will nail your job on the first swing, without hidden fees, incomplete work, or the horror of them ghosting with your deposit?
Here are seven key questions that peel away the façade and reveal whether a contractor is the real deal or just real trouble:
1. Who Actually Be Doing the Work?
Look for hesitation when you ask a contractor this question. They should be able to rattle off names. Bill, Steve, Jorge, or Matt. If they sputter, you should probably dig in more (or just run). Usually, the installer is not the one in your home selling the job, but the person selling should know several of the installers and the amount of experience that they have.
If they don’t have a strong answer right away, you might ask a follow-up question like, “Oh, is he a W2 or 10-99 employee?” This will get to the root. In general, you want to work with a company that has several W2 employees as installers. The thing is, 10-99 employees are often paid for the completion of the job, not the quality of the work, timeliness, or general decorum. W2 employees, on the other hand, aren’t only worrying about their wallets, they are also thinking about the good name of their company, wowing the homeowner, and earning a good report to share with their superiors. This level of accountability seriously helps improve the overall quality of work with home improvement projects.
Now, we do want to say that not all 10-99 employees are bad. In fact, many reputable contractors have long standing 10-99 relationships with contractors to outsource certain kinds of work. Let’s say you’re working with a sheetrock company to fix your walls, but there’s an electrical issue that needs to be fixed before the sheetrock goes up. A reputable contractor might say something like, “There is some electrical work that needs to get completed before I can install the sheetrock. I have an electrician that I’ve been working with for 10 years who does amazing work. You can either hire him directly or I can sub the work out to him. His name is Bill and he owns XYZ Electrical. They’ve been in business for 16 years and I’ve never had a customer complain about his work. Here’s his website and some work that he’s done.” That would definitely stir up some confidence in me!
If you are hiring a contractor to replace your shower, give you a new roof, or make a siding repair, you want that contractor to be an expert at his craft. The thing is, everyone claims to be an expert. That’s why you need to ask this question!
If the answer is, “Oh, I don’t know, once every few months,” you probably want to think twice about hiring them. If your supposed “painter” only paints crown molding once a year, why would you trust him to paint yours?
You might be thinking, “Doesn’t the number of jobs depend on what kind of job we’re talking about?” Yes! Absolutely! For jobs that take 1-2 days like roofing, gutters, or showers, you probably want your installers to do about 15 jobs every month. For jobs that take longer—weeks or months to complete—just adjust your scale. A home builder who builds 10-30 custom homes every year is probably reputable. One who only builds 2 or 3… Probably not.
It is important to be working with a contractor who has an actual place of business. This means that he is not operating out of a P.O. Box!!! You can’t visit a P.O. Box, talk to the receptionist at a P.O. Box, or demand your money back at a P.O. Box… you get the picture.
Unfortunately, you also have to watch out for contractors who pop up in strip malls. It’s easy for companies to open and close unexpectedly in places like this. They arrange a month-to-month lease and cut their losses if things go south. Then they’ll just open a new LLC in a different strip mall with no ties to the old business. This article tells the story of a man in Massachusetts who did just that.
If the contractor that you are talking to has a real building as a place of business, then that’s a good sign. And if we’re being honest, there are reputable small-town contractors who just use their home as their office. This isn’t necessarily bad because using your home address in business creates real stakes to maintain and uphold your reputation as a business.
The best option, of course, is to work with a company that owns a building, offices, and a warehouse. That way, if something goes wrong, you can just walk in the front door and refuse to leave until they fix it! Of course, we would hope that it never gets to that point, but at least you have that option.
You want names. Don’t work with a contractor who won’t tell you the names of their people. You should feel comfortable to ask about their general manager, their installers, or even their bookkeeper. You don’t want to work with a cagy company that unnecessarily withholds information.
The easiest way to get this info is to just look at their About Us page on their website. The About Us page should have clear information about the story of the company, how long they’ve been in business, and where they are going as an organization. It’s important to see the names and faces of the owners, the managers, anyone in the office, and even the installers on the website. Why would they hide? Are they not proud of their work or their team?
You want to hire a contractor who has one or several dedicated service technicians. Companies may call these individuals by different titles, but their roles are the same. If (God forbid) anything goes wrong with your project, you need an individual who is on standby to come out and fix the problem immediately. That’s what a service technician is for.
Reputable contractors always hire service technicians early in their business development so that they can maintain top-notch standards of service for their customers.
If the contractor that you’re talking to doesn’t have a service tech on staff as a W2 employee, you might want to think twice about hiring them. (Unless you enjoy waiting for weeks while a problem goes unaddressed on a brand-new product that you just paid thousands of dollars for.)
The longevity of their installers speaks volumes. Whether it’s W2s or long-term 10-99s, a stable team suggests a healthy, reliable operation.
This is a best-practice in evaluating a business. A banker friend of mine once told me that the first thing that he looks at when considering a business for a loan is how long the employees have worked there. It might seem like a small thing, but it speaks volumes about the health of the organization. When you are hiring a contractor for your home, you want to work with a company that values its employees and treats them well.
And, sure, we don’t always speak highly of 10-99 installers, but if a company has been working with a 10-99 contractor for 15 years, it’s probably trustworthy. Length of time really makes a difference.
Finally, you want to work with a contractor who can truly back up their warranty. That’s why you want to ask about specific examples of when they messed up and how they handled it. Did they go and fix the issue? Did they replace it? Did they provide a refund? Did they leave the customer high-and-dry?
This is important for obvious reasons. You want to work with a company that genuinely honors their word, takes ownership of their mistakes, and resolves them. Every single company makes mistakes sometimes, but the factor that distinguishes good contractors from great contractors is the way that they handle their mistakes. Can they swallow their pride and fix the issue, or do they make you swallow the bill?
When it comes to finding a contractor you can trust, it’s all about digging deeper. Don’t settle for surface-level assurances; demand the depth and detail that only a genuinely trustworthy contractor can provide. Even if you don’t use an AskGer partner to complete your project, PLEASE use these questions! They will help you avoid potentially thousands of dollars lost with months of needless anxiety. We want you to succeed in finding the best home improvement specialist for your home!
