Unlicensed Contractors

If you hire a person with no license to do any work on your home you are flirting with disaster. It is not just that they are unlicensed, unbonded, and uninsured.

The contractors board can’t  do anything to stop these people. They give no invoices or receipts, they  insist on cash because they have no business account to deposit a check in, and they work cheaper than a legitimate contractor because of this. Their overhead is small. If you complain to the contractors board they will tell you that it is your fault, you hired an unlicensed person and you are on your own. They talk a good game about going after these people but they do nothing.

When the big crash hit all the construction people who were laid off were forced to go into business for themselves or move to an area of the country that had work. As a result there was, and is,  a glut of contractors, legitimate and not, all trying for customers who were also experiencing financial problems. They needed their plumbing fixed and the cheapest person was the way to go. The result was and is a perfect storm of unqualified people doing substandard work offering no warranties of any kind, taking the money and running.

I can’t tell you how many times we have gone to a house after a so called plumber  has started a plumbing repair and walked away with the problem unfixed.

You might think this is good for our business but that is untrue. It makes our trade look bad.

If you are a legitimate contractor and and a homeowner complains to the the contractors board, they will come down on you hard, fine you , threaten to take away your lively hood and make a big deal of it in the process, thereby justifying their jobs in the process. Performing plumbing work with no license is a criminal offense, punishable by jail time. I have never heard of anyone being arrested for this, ever.The contractors board recording encourages the caller to report unlicensed contractors. I have reported at least 10 obviously unlicensed people to them over the years and nothing ever came of it.

Makes you wonder if it is worth being a legitimate contractor.