If you make an appointment with a reputable, local home-improvement company that insures and bonds its employees, you can feel confident the workers will come into your house in a company truck and wearing company uniforms, and they will do the job and leave without creating a problem for you.
I can’t say the same for the strangers who go from door to door begging for work from people who did not invite them onto their property.
Those people are strangers. Phoenix Police Department spokesman Sgt. Tommy Thompson warns that you set yourself up for more than a home-improvement rip-off when you let a stranger into your home. You literally could be robbed.
“Even though they might not steal anything from you right now, there’s always the possibility that they will come back,” he says. “Your home is your castle; your home is your world. You wouldn’t knowingly let somebody in who will do harm to you or to your house. Be really careful about who you let into your house.”
Most legitimate contractors do not go door to door soliciting new business. They won’t require their customers to pay in cash. They don’t ask for payment in full on the spot or up front. And they won’t tell you that today is the only possible day they can do the work.
Hire home-improvement contractors you know and trust or who come highly recommended by people you know and trust—like Rosie, who has a list of recommended home-improvement companies he can vouch for on his Referral Network.
Most of us are more than willing to “share” a good handyman, roofer or gardener with friends and neighbors. Rosie is happy to recommend the experienced, reliable companies he has worked with to Rosie on the House show listeners—and that they thank him again and again for pointing them in the direction of contractors who are local, licensed and willing to let their customers take some time to make decisions and to check them out before they say “yes” to the job.
