How to check out a handyman before you let him in your house
A+ Handyman · Winchester, VA
There is no test to become a handyman.
That’s the part most people don’t realise. Somebody can decide on a Tuesday that they’re in the home repair business, get a magnet made for the truck door, and be taking deposits by Thursday. Nothing stops them. And most of the time it goes fine, right up until the day it doesn’t.
We are not going to spend this post running anybody down. There are good people working out of a pickup truck, and there are bad ones working for big companies. What we can do is show you exactly how to tell the difference before you hand somebody a check, because it takes about ten minutes and almost nobody does it.
## Ask for the licence number, then actually look it up
In Virginia, contractors are licensed by the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, and there are classes. A Class C licence covers smaller jobs. Class B covers more. Class A has the highest limits and the most requirements behind it.
The number itself is not the point – the point is that you can look it up. Virginia has a public licence lookup on the DPOR website. Type in the number or the business name and you’ll see whether the licence is real, what class it is, whether it’s current, and whether there is any disciplinary history attached to it.
A contractor who hesitates when you ask for that number has told you something important.
Ours is **2705161701**, Class A. We also carry a Frederick County licence, #24352, and a City of Winchester licence, #2000019798. Go ahead and look them up.
## “Licensed and insured” is two different promises, and there’s a third
This phrase gets used as one word and it shouldn’t be.
**Licensed** means the state has confirmed they meet the requirements to do the work.
**Insured** means there is liability coverage if something goes wrong at your house – if a pipe gets hit, if there’s water damage, if somebody gets hurt. Ask who the carrier is. Ours is Erie Insurance. A real answer comes back immediately; a vague one doesn’t.
**Bonded** is the one people skip, and it’s the one that protects you in the situation you’re actually afraid of. A bond is money set aside that a customer can claim against if the contractor takes payment and doesn’t finish the job. It exists precisely for the deposit-and-disappear problem.
We are all three, and we would rather you asked us than assumed.
## Look for something that took time to earn
Anybody can be new. That’s fine – everybody was new once. But some things can only be accumulated, and those are the ones worth looking for.
We have been the Winchester Star’s award winner in the Best Handyman category for **ten years running**. We mention that not to crow about it but because it’s a readers’ choice award – it means the people in this town picked us, ten years in a row, and you can’t buy that or hurry it.
We carry a BBB A+ rating. We are not BBB accredited, and we’ll say so rather than let anybody assume otherwise.
The company has been in business 28 years, and Jim has been in the trade for 42. In a business where a lot of operations don’t see a third birthday, longevity is not a vanity number. It means the warranty on the work you’re paying for today is likely to still be attached to somebody in five years.
## Ask who is actually going to show up
This is the question people forget, and it’s the one that decides how the job feels.
With a lot of the bigger operations, you get whoever is available. Different person each visit, no memory of your house, and you explain the whole thing again from scratch every time.
We have six to eight technicians, and we work the same way we have always worked: the person who knows your house is the person we send back to it. When somebody has already fixed your back door, they know what’s behind the trim. That’s worth more than it sounds like.
## A few quiet warning signs
Not proof of anything on their own, but worth noticing when they stack up.
A large deposit up front, in cash, before any materials have been bought. No written estimate. A phone number that goes to voicemail with no business name on it. No physical address anywhere – and yes, we have a storefront on Berryville Avenue, which is unusual in this trade and is there partly so you know where to find us. Pressure to decide today. And a price that is dramatically below everyone else’s, because that number has to come from somewhere, and usually it comes out of the part of the job you can’t see.
## The ten minutes
Look up the licence. Ask who insures them and who bonds them. Ask how long they’ve been at it and who will be doing the work. Get it in writing.
Do that with us, and do it with whoever else you’re considering. We are comfortable being checked on – a company that has been here 28 years and won the same award ten years running is not worried about a licence lookup.
That’s really the whole point. Ask the questions. The right contractor will be glad you did.