Four ways to avoid being scammed by a cowboy tradie

“For all intents and purposes he’d sailed off into the sunset with my money in his account, having barely raised a sweat”

As a young man in my mid-20s I knew everything. Seriously, I did. There was no issue or problem for which I did not have a solution and so certain was I of the "rightness" of my view of the great social problems of the day that I was convinced that, given the opportunity quickly Thirty put years the to fix on world them and to an I right. could interesting taken place. metamorphosis On the one hand, has I’m things a great than deal I less was certain in my 20s about and now tend to see issues in nuanced layers rather than black and white. But I’m also a lot more "worldly wise" – an old term that simply means that my collective experiences have made me more aware of how the world really works and much more likely to be able to quickly spot a solution to an intractable problem.

So you’d think I’d be able to spot a scam a mile off – right? So did I. Turns out I was wrong.

Around six weeks ago I needed some work done on my home in Ellerslie and placed the job on one of the "tradie aggregator" sites that have popped over the past few years. These sites are great because they allow you to invite competitive quotes for your job and enable you to compare them against each other on price and other factors.

After placing my job and getting a series of quotes I chose a tradie to complete the work. He wasn’t the cheapest – but something about his manner gave me confidence in his ability to deliver and, as per his request, I promptly paid 50 percent of the quoted price into his nominated account.

Two days later he turned up with a young labourer who completed around three hours work – and then ... nothing. He simply disappeared. No response to phone calls, texts or emails, and certainly no sign of him on site. For all intents and purposes he’d sailed off into the sunset with my money in his account, having barely raised a sweat.

To be fair, the job placement site was fantastic, immediately suspending him and sending an email warning others based on my sorry tale. But sadly, it was too late for me – other than as a cursory tale for readers of my One Roof column.

So, what did I learn?

1. Don’t pay any money upfront.

This seems kind of obvious in hindsight, but don’t pay anything upfront unless the job site offers some sort of "escrow service" where the funds aren’t released until you’ve informed the intermediatary that you’re satisfied with the work. Of all of my mistakes in this incident, this is the one over which I feel most foolish.

2. Don’t engage anyone who doesn’t have any reviews.

This guy had no reviews. Zip. Nada. Zero. So there was no basis upon which to judge his work based on feedback from others. Again, with the benefit of hindsight this seems blindingly obvious to me now but he was just so reassuring that it never occurred to me to look. I won’t make that mistake again.

3. Meet the tradie before confirming the job.

I know, I know – obvious, right? Except it wasn’t. We had a couple of phone chats after he’d been to look at the site and he impressed me with his understanding of what needed to be done, including suggesting some things that hadn’t occurred to me. Clearly that was dumb – and the lesson is to make sure that you meet your preferred tradie, before commissioning the job – particularly where the value of the project is significant.

4. Confirm what’s being done, in writing.

This one isn’t so relevant to my experience (where virtually nothing was done) but it’s also a good idea to make sure that there’s a written record of what’s been agreed to. Failure to do this could mean getting into a dispute, even with a reputable tradie – so don’t leave the details of the job to chance or hearsay.

For the record – most tradies are thoroughly decent people who can be entirely relied upon to complete your job well, and on time. But as with most things, there’s a few bad eggs who spoil it for the rest.

- Ashley Church is the former CEO of the Property Institute of New Zealand and is now a property commentator for Oneroof.co.nz. Email him at ashley@nzemail.com