Selecting a remodeling contractor
This post is one in a series on remodeling small bathrooms. For the lead post, please select the link in the prior sentence.
The focus of this post is how you find a quality contractor.
There is another post that identifies a series of questions you should ask during the contractor selection process, but that is separate from how you find people to ask the questions of.
The Solera Group provides expert bathroom remodeling services in the greater San Jose metro area.
So how do you find quality contractors?
Word of Mouth
The absolute and all time best method is word of mouth. Do you know someone who had a great experience? Find out who they used.
Reputation Sites, other than Angie’s List
Reputation sites are sites like Yelp, Angies List, Google Places, etc, where consumers rate service providers. Believe it or not, I consider these sites to NOT be a good place to find a contractor, with the exception of Angie’s List.
Why? Two reasons, both of which I know from first hand experience:
1) Business owners and their friends and family members have been known to submit false negative reviews of competitive business, which the reputation site then refuses to remove. I know several business owners to whom this occurred.
In one case a car repair shop in Mountain View, CA received a negative review from someone living in New York City and they described the facility incorrectly, and still the website operator refused to take it down.
2) Perhaps a result of the issue above, there are companies who for a fee will submit fake good reviews. Some years ago I received a call from such a company and was stupefied by their sales pitch.
I asked him how much for one review as I wanted to see the quality, so I now have one really good but purely fictitious review on a site reviewing us. This practice is apparently wide spread, but I have no way of knowing how wide spread.
Angie’s List
Why is Angie’s List different? Because it’s not free for consumers. People who want to post fake reviews (both good and bad) don’t want to pay $5.20 per month per identify they use to post them. For this reason I trust reviews from Angie’s List, where as I don’t trust reviews on other reputation sites.
Are Bad Reviews Always Bad?
Not necessarily. There is such a thing as a bad customer and unfortunately these reputation sites only allow consumers to rate service providers, they don’t also allow service providers to rate consumers.
If you don’t have a word of mouth referral and have to rely on some form of reputation website to find people, by all means be concerned about bad reviews, but also look at how the contractor responded (assuming they did) and ask them about it.
If a contractor has 8 excellent reviews and 1 terrible review, something went wrong, but allow the contractor to explain before you write them off.
Do you need help with your small bathroom remodel? Contact us for help. We’re experts…