Hiring a General Contractor: Failure to even Deliver a Bid!

[Joshua Dorkin]

I'm looking to get bids for a rehab project in my house, and as such, have sought out general contractors.

I contacted 6 contractors over the past 3 weeks. Of these, 5 have come to get the scope of the project and all have spent nearly an hour walking through and going over details with me.

1 has responded with a bid and I'm still waiting for one to come today.

The guy who is supposed to come today was scheduled for 10am, but called after 9:30am and told me he couldn't make it until 11:30am or so.

I've been waiting for over a week on several of these bids, and it has been a few days on another.

So, essentially, as far as I'm concerned, the one guy who responded with a bid within 3 days and the guy who came out on Wednesday are the only guys worth consideration (unless I don't get a bid from the latter soon), but the former's numbers were very high. I take living up to appointments very seriously, and the guy who is supposed to come today is has already dropped on my list for wasting my entire morning.

Maybe my expectations are a little off here . . . oh - by the way, every one of these people has been recommended by someone - some from people here on BP and others from people I know.

How long should it take for a contractor to get back to you with a bid?

Is this my bad luck, or are the rest of you seeing this same sort of lackadaisical attitude towards getting hired by contractors?

Please . . . share your thoughts.

[J Scott]

Par for the course, Josh...

We routinely have about a third of the contractors who come out to give bids never get back to us, despite driving long distances to see the job, spending a lot of time walking through and taking measurements, etc.

I don't understand it, but I appreciate the bad contractors weeding themselves out... :)

Btw, my rule is that if a contractor shows up to give a bid more than 15 minutes late without calling, we don't even bother talking to him. If he can't show up on time when he's in sales mode, he certainly won't show up on time once he gets the job.