Contractor Responsibility

Progress on the house continues. It is great to see real professionals at work. People who can make a commitment and stick to it. Who update you with progress and let you know the current status of your project. Thanks again for bringing this project back from the precipice.


Which brings me to this question, why don't some contractors take responsibility? When given a job of building a house, remodeling a kitchen, adding a room, the consensus from people I have spoken to is that some contractors will never admit a mistake. Some just try to ignore it, some try to blame the customers 'meddling' and some actually tell the customer to leave them alone and they will get the job done.(as happened to me). Why not make it right? Why not accept that you did not meet the customers expectation and ask them what would it take to make them happy? Taking responsibility is something most of us learn growing up. What happened to these individuals? Did their parents not give them enough attention, do they despise all authority? Do they become contractors because they can be their own boss, make their own hours, and have virtually no accountability for bad work as long as they can make it pass code?

All bad contractors know that they have the advantage. They know they can do sub-par work and not have any repercussions. The bar is so high to get a complaint on their record that most people do not even try. A contractor can do a bad job and move on. They control who their references are, who their prospective customers talk to, and even the work their prospective customers see.

The agency that regulates contractors in California, the Contractors State License Board, makes getting a complaint on a contractors record is close to an act of god. The amount of documentation and paper work they request is amazing. The amount of paper work is more than what a bank would ask for in a home loan.

In order to have the CSLB begin looking into your alleged complaint, a contractor would have to do something like:

• Not pay their sub-contractors in a timely manner
• Refuse to correct faulty work
• Perhaps make structural changes on their own without consulting a Structural Engineer

Then, the Contractors State License Board will begin to look into your complaint. Should I consider myself lucky that there they are looking into my alleged complaint?

When I first met Dave Exline, he came across as a very dedicated, hard working, honest, upfront, responsible contractor. For me, he is just another report to the CSLB.