The home improvement industry has some of the worst customer satisfaction scores than any industry out there. The cable guys have us beat, besides that no industry leaves homeowners less satisfied than the home improvement industry. The research dedicated to cover the reason for this always includes the same three common sense bullet points which I will go over in two separate blog posts.
1. The homeowner thinks they are going to get one thing and get another. Most contractors deliver a 1-page proposal to the homeowner. However, remodeling projects are highly detailed and can be incredibly complicated to understand. It is impossible for a contractor to detail every aspect of a project to the homeowner through a 1-5 page proposal. Often, contractors will tell homeowners what they are doing but completely neglect how they are going to make this happen. Additionally, this scope of work will be vague and lack the detail needed to document what will be done throughout the project adequately.
2.Change order – The homeowner receives a higher price than they initially agreed to during the proposal. A change order is whenever there is a price increase during a construction project. The three reasons a remodeling company would pass a change order onto a homeowner if the following scenarios happen.
A. The contractor ran into problems they did not initially anticipate because it is impossible to know some of a buildings circumstances without removing the exterior building components. For example, there may be rotten sheathing under existing siding. The homeowner and contractor will not know about this till the siding is removed. These types of change orders are legitimate. However, expected change orders for an overall change policy should be a discussion the homeowner and contractor have before a project starts. Hatch homes has a zero change order policy, except for one thing, rotten wood. Our company does not want to charge for a service that they did not see coming.
B. Bait and switch tactic- A bait and switch tactic is when a remodeling company provides a homeowner with a lower price with the intention of increasing that price after the contract is signed. Companies do this because contractors know homeowners are more likely to select them if their initial rate is lower than the competition. In other words, one contractor would charges 20 thousand when another charges 40 thousand dollars. The homeowner then chooses the 20,000 contractor, then that contractor passes a change order after the contract has been signed for an addition 10,000 dollars.
C. A contractor is not a specialist in the type of work that they complete. Since the contractor is not an expert, this results in the contractor realizing partially through the process that this job is going to cost much more money than the contractor initially thought. During this time is when the contractor would ask you for more money midway through the project bc they don’t want to lose money out of their pocket.At this point, the contractor is going to take 1 of 2 approaches.
– They will cut corners where need be to drop project costs.
– The h.o wants to add to the scope of work to the project.
Stay tuned for part two of this blog which will be posted shortly after this one.