Avoid This Blacksburg Painter At All Costs!

Whether you’re looking to upgrade your home before selling it in Blacksburg VA, or just want a refreshing look for your day-to-day living, hiring exterior house painters can be very beneficial. However, it’s important to do your own due diligence on any potential painting contractor that you’re thinking about hiring.

Painting a home costs a good chunk of change, and you want to ensure that that money is going towards getting you the look that you want and not going down the drain. We’re going to share with you some of the most common painter scams that you need to be on the lookout for when hiring a potential home painting contractor.

Minimal Experience

You don’t want to hire home painters that decided they were just going to start a painting company a few months or a year ago. Painting is a skill that takes time to develop and perfect. Whenever you’re looking to hire a company, you want to ensure that they have years of experience. You want to avoid any companies that are extremely new. This especially holds if you live in an area where a natural disaster has recently occurred, and there’s a lot of home renovation work going on.

An Unwillingness to Verify Their Insurance Coverage

As a paying homeowner, it’s your right to ensure that any home painters you hire have adequate insurance coverage. This includes insurance coverage to cover any injuries that may happen to the painters while they’re on your property, as well as insurance that will cover any unexpected damages that may occur during the painting process. If the home painting company you’re thinking about hiring is very unwilling to show you any verification of their insurance, then it’s a red flag and you should move on to finding a different painting company.

No Detailed Estimate or Signed Contract

Every legitimate painting contractor should be able to evaluate what your needs are and provide you with a written scope of work. It should be done in the form of an estimate that you can physically look over to see what products are being used, their quantity, labor cost, and so forth.

Additionally, a licensed and quality painter will be able to provide you with a physical contract that both of you will sign to ensure that each of you will be holding up your end of the business transaction. If the painter that you’re attempting to work with is unwilling to put your agreement into writing and only wants to stick to a verbal estimate, it could mean potential trouble.

They’re Using Low-Quality Products

Whenever you get your written estimate, it should show you the specific products that your chosen home painter will use. While you may not know a whole lot about painting, you can do a little research online to get a good idea of the names of quality painting products.

Professional painting companies will stick to using good quality paint that they know will properly adhere and provide good quality results. Professionals don’t skimp out on the materials that they use because they know their reputation is on the line when it comes to the end result of what they’re doing. If you notice that your written estimate has a bunch of low-end products, you’ll want to look into working with a different contractor.

Minimal or No Online Reviews

This is the day and age of technology. Whenever you need to hire a service professional, you simply jump online and are provided with a ton of Google results for professionals in your area. It is so easy to be able to go online and write a review about a professional you’ve used in the past. This influx of online reviews helps to legitimatize a company and provide people who are looking for services or products with real accounts of what they can expect to receive.

Before you even consider consulting a specific exterior painting company, you should check the reviews online. Legitimate companies that have been in business for quite a while will have a plethora of online reviews from their past customers. Reading through some of these reviews and looking at their ratings can allow you to determine whether or not the exterior painting company provides quality service or if they’re just trying to make as much money as possible. If a particular company you’re thinking about hiring doesn’t have any online reviews, you may want to skip over them to go for a company that has many good online reviews.

Odd Payment Requests

When you’re dealing with most professional painting contractors, they’ll require an upfront deposit. This helps to ensure that you’re going to, in good faith, pay the remainder of the bill once the work is finished. This upfront deposit typically covers the cost of materials that the contractor has to purchase.

In most cases, this upfront deposit should not exceed 50% of the estimated total for the entire job. Legitimate house painters will have no problem taking different forms of payment for your upfront deposit, such as cash, credit card, or a personal check. If a painting company tells you that the only way you can make the upfront deposit is in cash, it should be a red flag. If you’re searching for a reputable and trustworthy painting contractor in the Blacksburg VA area, look no further than Parmer & Sons Painting. We have years of experience in Home Remodeling and can help turn your renovation dreams into a reality. We’re fully licensed and insured and love consulting with customers about color choices, scheduling, and everything painting. Contact us today to get the professional painting assistance that you need.