Be careful when hiring winter contractors

Those living in the foothills and higher know that it's been one heck of a winter this year.

With heavy storms that bring rain, wind and snow, the chances of property damage are incredibly high and I don't know about you, but some fixes are way out of my skill set.

Downed trees, fallen limbs, chicken coops falling over and sending eggs and birds flying into the sky to make storm omelets. I may not know much about chickens, but I know this type of weather can be a contracting scammer's dream come true.

It's also common enough that the Federal Trade Commission has a whole section on contractor scams.

During these periods of winter storm weather, folks living in high-impact areas will likely get calls and emails from unlicensed contractors, either an automatic message or a real person, trying to get you to agree on hiring them to provide various tasks and cleaning operations. The FTC warns that these folks may even start going door to door asking to do things like repairing furnaces or generators, fixing a roof leak and cleaning out heat ducts.

Chances are that person might poke around a bit, take your money and leave without doing hardly any work if any at all.

If they are calling or emailing, there's also a chance that they are outof-towners who might try to get you to pay a down payment in advance only to never show up and then go off the grid.

Luckily, you aren't a chicken in a wind storm and have a fighting chance against your problems.

One of the best ways to avoid this is to get recommendations from those you trust, say family, friends and neighbors. If you need the work done, you'll be reaching out to the contractor, not the other way around.

When hiring someone, make sure to see their license and proof of insurance along with any other form of identification they can give you to verify that they are who they say they are, and not a scammer or five chickens in a jumpsuit.

It's OK to hold off on immediately hiring someone if you want to do a background check or read reviews. Maybe even do that before calling them.

There are also protections to paying with a check or credit card as opposed to cash and gift cards. As a general rule of thumb, never pay someone in gift cards. Save those only for birthday and Christmas gifts that you are planning to give directly to the person.

And lastly, try to have a contract with the individual.

Stay safe, warm and dry out there.