Growth fueling complaints against contractors

published on Saturday, September 8, 2007 10:32 PM MDT

By TED SULLIVAN Chronicle Staff Writer

Mike Thompson is an easy going and friendly Bozeman resident, the kind of guy who will buy dinner for his contractor and prepay thousands of dollars for a job on an old-fashioned contract: a simple handshake.

Yet more than a year after paying a contractor $8,500 for a backyard deck, the three-month job isn't finished and the 38-year-old retired corporate executive is in the middle of a dispute with the contractor he hired for the job.

“People build million-dollar homes within a year. This is a friggin' deck,” Thompson said, wearing a Harley Davidson T-shirt and casual shorts while sipping a large coffee with a shot of espresso. “It's not about the money. It's a question of principle.”

In the booming Gallatin Valley, growth is fueling both the new construction and home-remodel industries, but the downside is it's also drawing unscrupulous contractors to the area. And because the state has few laws regulating contractors, people who feel they've been conned have little recourse other than an expensive and time-consuming lawsuit.

Over the past year, the Montana Department of Justice received 65 complaints against contractors hired for new construction or home remodels, including nine complaints against a single Manhattan-based fencing company, a business that has taken $1,500 to $8,000 from customers without even starting the work, said Michelle Truax, a supervisor at the state Department of Justice, Office of Consumer Protection.

The Chronicle could not reach anyone with that company.

The Montana Better Business Bureau also rates more than 30 businesses in Southwest Montana as unsatisfactory, seven of which are companies that do contractor-related work.

Both agencies list household repair and remodeling in the top five among consumer complaints, where people prepay for work that never gets done or is done without satisfaction.

“The big problem we have in Montana is that nobody regulates contractors. Anybody in Montana can pay $75 and get a contractor's license,” Truax said. “We don't have any regulating power over them. We don't have laws regulating bad work.”

The Department of Justice can field complaints and contact contractors who are accused of poor workmanship, unfinished jobs or theft, Truax said. And her office tries to mediate disputes.

In some cases, such as with the Manhattan fencing business, the Department of Justice will issue a “cease and desist” order against the company, meaning the contractor can't conduct business until the complaints are settled, Truax said.

But Montana is a “buyer beware state,” she said, and most people have no recourse other than hiring an attorney and pursuing a lawsuit.

In Gallatin County last year, 78 civil cases were filed in Justice Court involving contract disputes, according to court records. Another 1,344 money-owed complaints were filed.

“If (the contractor) doesn't have any assets or anything like that, you're basically out of the money,” Truax said.

Zan Deery, an investigator with the Better Business Bureau, said the number of complaints against contractors has skyrocketed in the past couple of years as the region has grown in population. When business is booming, people want to take advantage of all the work.

“The scammers know when an area is hot. We're definitely in a hotbed,” she said. “Contractors are always in our top three or four in complaints and inquiries each month.”

Contractors can swoop into town and disappear, she said, and they're often hard to find. People need to conduct thorough background checks before hiring someone.

“People really just tend to trust people way too much,” Deery said.

Such was the case with Thompson, who took his contractor to dinner twice, once at Looie's Down Under and another time at Montana Ale Works. He admits he shouldn't have befriended his worker.

Thompson is withholding his contractor's final payment until his deck is finished. He said the original plan was to include a bar, but that was never added. Meanwhile, the contractor has filed a lien on his house in demand of final payment, even though Thompson claims the work took more than a year and hasn't been finished. The contractor also filed a collections claim against him.

In response, Thompson intends to file a small-claims lawsuit against the contractor and make a report to the Better Business Bureau and Department of Justice.

“That's my next course of action. I'm going to go through this thing with blinders on. I'm dead serious,” he said. “I feel like I was taken advantage of because of my generosity and my good nature.”

Ted Sullivan is at tsullivan@dailychrnonicle.com

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