Contractor Trial Run: Cultivating Trust
Contributed By: Louie Martini
“Hiring a contractor is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” Forrest Gump wasn’t far off when he made this declaration. Okay, okay he didn’t actually say this, but I think his logic about life is pretty relevant to hiring contracting professionals. For starters, there are typically tons of options when it comes to seeking out the right company to hire for your next home remodel project or repair. A simple Google search of “contractors in my area” can lead to dozens of front page results of different companies and their websites, reviews and bold claims about being “Top Rated in (insert your town here).”
The truth is, not everybody can be top rated. It doesn’t really work that way, regardless of what companies say about themselves. So this begs the question, how do you know who’s worth hiring for your next home remodel project or repair? Reviews are an excellent place to start. Satisfied customers are usually less likely to publish a positive interaction or experience with a company as opposed to those dissatisfied customers who seem to be so willing to share their negative experiences. This being said, if a company has a good amount of solid positive reviews online, the folks over there must be doing something right.
The task of hiring a contractor can prove to be a bit overwhelming if you don’t already have a good relationship with a company or contractor of choice. Say you recently moved to a new area and don’t quite have a handle on the local businesses that are knocking it out of the park. Social media groups and Internet searches are great resources to gather more information and perhaps a company name or two. I’ve spoken with customers who received my company’s information from Facebook group recommendations proving the power of spoken word (or in this case typed word).
Even as a small business owner, I’ve always believed that customers doing a bit of shopping for quotes on their home remodel project or repair is a healthy practice. See what’s out there. Make a few phone calls and get an idea of who you may get a good feeling about. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you get three quotes for the same job, you now have some background to make an informed decision of who to hire for the work. It’s not always all about price. In fact, it rarely ever is all about price. Companies that prioritize transparency and excellence usually come out on top when it comes to home remodels and repairs.
This leads to the key component of this post. If you’re unsure of who to hire for a larger remodel project, it could be a great idea to either break the project down into smaller phases or find a smaller job in your home first to conduct a contractor trial run. Hear me out on this one. Let’s say you have a 30-year-old original full bathroom in your home that is well overdue for an upgrade. The quotes you’ve received for the total remodel are between $17,000 and $22,000. Not a ridiculously wide range, but enough to make you consider why there may be that $5,000 gap between the lowest and highest bid. If you’re uncomfortable committing that kind of investment to a company you haven’t worked with before, maybe hiring that company for a smaller project first just to get a better idea of how they operate can give you confidence and put you at ease.
Say you have a hole in a wall that needs to be patched or a bedroom door that needs to be repaired and painted. These are both great, low barrier opportunities to test out a new contractor. For a couple hundred bucks, you can gauge whether or not you’d feel comfortable having this company take on a larger home remodel project or repair. If this contractor is pleasant on the phone, up front about his pricing, transparent about the repair, shows up on time, works efficiently and leaves the job site cleaner than he found it, you may have found yourself a winner!
Think of this strategy as a lower cost investment towards your larger remodel project. If you can bear spending $200 on a drywall patch repair in order to get a personal account of how you feel about a contractor, you could end up saving yourself thousands of dollars and a potential headache in the future if you end up hiring the wrong company. We’ve all heard horror stories from a friend of a friend who hired a contractor for a huge project. “The guy never showed!” “His quote was for $25,000, but he slapped us with a bill for $33,000.” “They were a mess from the beginning.” “I swear one of those guys stole cash from the cookie jar in the kitchen.”
I’d like to say that stuff like this doesn’t actually happen, but unfortunately, it does. I’m not saying that all contractors are like this, or even some for that matter. The reality is that the very small percentage of those that are like this smear the perception of actual professionals running legitimate businesses. With that being said, consider hiring a company for a smaller project before turning over the keys to the Lamborghini (or in the case of our above example, your full bathroom remodel).
This can be a great way to cultivate trust and develop an actual relationship with a skilled and well-respected contractor. It’s a major plus when the people working on your home have your best interest prioritized. At the end of the day, trust is already a driving factor in most of our daily purchases. Why should the service provided by hiring a contractor for your home remodel project or repair be any different?
*Thank you for visiting the BHC Blog. Feel free to send me a message with any questions you may have regarding this article.*
