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WHAT IS A ‘GYPSY’ CONTRACTOR?

You know those scruffy guys who come knocking at your door—uninvited—to ask if you need any repairs around your house or lawn? Rosie calls them “gypsy contractors.”

The Arizona Registrar of Contractors (ROC) calls them something worse: “transient criminals.” They’re “transient” because they drive here from the Midwest or other cold-weather areas to find work in our warm state. They’re “criminals” because they’re not licensed to work in Arizona, so if they do, they’re breaking the law.

They might not look like criminals, and, in fact, some of them are competent handymen and nice guys. But if you hire someone without a valid Arizona contractor’s license to work around your home, you’re helping him break the law.

People who would break one law—working without a license—often break others, too, Livingston warns. The ROC recently discovered a paving crew that traveled from Oregon to California to Nevada to Arizona to New Mexico, leaving a trail of cracked, crumbling, sub-standard driveways behind them. They had done all of their work with stolen equipment and cut-rate materials.

These guys don’t pay Arizona taxes like on-the-level contractors do. They target senior citizens, single moms and the infirmed who can’t do a lot of home repairs without help. Too often, they take your money and run before finishing the project. And even more often than that, they do shoddy work with cheap or stolen materials.

Plus, there’s no guarantee that they are bonded or that they meet the standards set for licensed contractors by the ROC.

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