Selecting a Home contractor

By: Theresa Moss

Vendor Scene focuses on providing a more effective process for the event planning consumer, or homeowner, seeking reliable service vendors and suppliers for their events or home improvement projects.

These days you can’t tune into the news or a 20/20 segment detailing the frustrations of consumers being scammed by businesses that take money, without providing services.

After nearly a year of research, and the gathering of articles and sites online, the founder of Vendor Scene has developed a workshop that outlines the steps consumers should follow to avoid, or at least be educated to the red flags that could be apparent before they write their first check, or hand over hard earned cash.

Over a year ago an elderly acquaintance expressed her excitement about getting work done on her garage which was deteriorating and causing her some concern.

She had unwittingly given a contractor, more than half of the agreed upon price to begin the work.

They met, he received the advance, and she never heard from him again, her calls went unanswered, and being that she didn’t have an address or home telephone number, she finally had accepted the fact, that she had been scammed.

Sadly, she had remortgaged her home to have the work done on her garage, at the age of 82 years old and alone, this wasn’t easy for her to accept.

To make matters worse, she repeated the same mistake again, but this time she only paid the contractor half plus materials. When the job was done, she complained of the poor quality of work, and the need to have it reconstructed.

Unforunately, since she had paid the 2nd contractor the balance, he had no reason to repair the work he had done, and didn’t. I’m sure, he knew being the ‘Christian’ woman she was, she wouldn’t report him to the Better Business Bureau, and she didn’t.

I followed up for her, and discovered neither contractor was registered with the Better Business Bureau, nor did they have licenses to perform the work on her garage.

It is essential that vendors/suppliers be properly checked out, before, not after you write them a check, or charge their services to your credit card.

While reviewing www.badbusinessbureau.com or www.ripoffreport.com I was very disturbed at the amount of complaints focused on a particular video production company.

The letters were dated within weeks and months of each other and the cities and states were all different, meaning the company would scam a city and its residents, pick up and move on to another area of the country.

The complaints began on the east coast and within a few months had moved toward the Midwest.

It took all of 5 minutes on the Better Business Bureau site to discover that this particular company, had numerous complaints, dated before, most of the complaints letters had been written.

Had each of these complainants done their homework beforehand, they would have known that the vendor they were considering could not/would not provide them with the service they were expecting.

Now, months later and with no visually memory of their wedding day, they focus on a class action suit. Something that could have possibly been avoided had they taken just a little extra time to either go online or request references.

The bottom line is, if you will be spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a stranger, find out who they are, what they’ve done, and whether or not they have satisfied customers.

Ask questions, and if you don’t get the answers you want, there’s going to be a problem.

Human nature, for many brings a lot of consumers to the wrong conclusion. ‘Well maybe it’ll be alright’ or ‘you don’t want to hurt the individuals feelings’ or worse yet, you were just so stressed out, and running to tie everything together, you just didn’t stop long enough to think everything through.

If you want it right the first time, and I’m sure that you do, you’ll need to take the time to see it through, and if that means researching, then that’s a whole lot cheaper, than taking the vendor to court.

During my research I compiled several informative, articles from several insightful writers and knowledgeable experts in the wedding industry, which I have included in my ezine, entitled The Vendor Selection Guide.

Outlining, red flag signals, the articles could help you, avoid being the victim of a scam while planning your wedding, or preparing to make improvements on your home.

Our workshop although focusing on wedding planning, can easily apply to home improvement as well.

Vendor Scene has a series of wedding guides, and will be offering to the public, additional services which will include prescreened listings of wedding/home vendors and suppliers nationwide.

About the author: Theresa Moss is a professional organizer with a passion for list making. With a background in security, she has developed an e-book entitled How to Declutter your Home (Secrets of an Organizer) http://www.checkitoffseries.mysite.com

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