Contractor Rant
Few questions for the BP community:
1. How do you deal with a contractor that asks what other estimates have come in at and then either matches the price or beats it by just a little bit, then expects to win the work? (assume quality of work is the same)
My response has always been "put your best foot forward - if you want to play the game of undercutting another estimate, I'll also give the other contractor a shot at undercutting yours.
2. What do you do/think, when a contractor bad mouths another one during the bidding process?
@david battle
Usually I ask other investors for referrals and start there. I've also found contractors through yelp.com and craigslist. Basically called about 10 of them and set aside a day for them to walk my job with me and submit a bid. Many were unresponsive and some stood me up, it was pretty easy to narrow down to a short list.
@Jason Mak I'll definitely try that. I'm also thinking about taking a trip to Lowes or Home Depot in the morning to see if I can find a contractor there or at least get a referral to someone.
When I started building 15 years ago, I took my materials list to 4 local lumber yards, Lowes, and Home Depot. These were whole house packages. Lowes and Home Depot were $7,000 higher than the highest lumber yard price. Their response was "bring in their quotes and we'll beat them by 10%. To me, that is the same as undercutting another contractor. I went with the second lowest bid because of their reputation and there was only a few dollars difference. When I was doing more contracting I would ask if I was competitive and who I was competing with. I find it unprofessional to ask and undercut or trash talk another contractor. Just my opinion. Good Luck, Mike