Spent Hours on Scam Prevention Today

Tweet

Last night Hubby came home and said someone approached him as he was leaving the Templeton house in the late afternoon and offered to give him a great price on paving our driveway. He said he had finished a job close by and had some left over materials. He didn't have enough for the whole driveway, but enough for the slope that is the biggest problem. He's from a city in Southern California. I told my husband not to do it. That's the approach scammers use. Hubby asked me to come back to Templeton with him to meet the guy, but I was too busy. Supposedly the guy was going to do the job right then. I think God was looking out for us. Hubby was back in a short time and said the guy said it was too late to do the job right that night -- it was already getting dark. Today we started discussing it again, since the guy was going to come back and do the job on Monday. I looked up the company, based in Texas and in San Gabriel, California, and most of the reviews were bad. Hubby called back and said we'd changed our mind because of the bad reviews. He gave my husband the address of the checkcba.org website. I did. They've only been a member there since last year and there were no reviews. It don't look good to me. I checked Home Advisor. This company wasn't listed. So called one of the numbers for a local company that was listed there. Evidently the person that answered was actually a Home Advisor employee, not the contractor I was trying to reach, but I didn't know that at first. I told him what had happened and he told me to tell the guy to get off our property and that we'd call the police if he came back. I thought that was good advice, but Hubby still wasn't sure the contractor who approached us was a scammer. I encouraged Hubby to call a friend who is a local building contractor for advice or at least a more accurate estimate of what a job like that should cost. How do you know if a deal is good if you don't know what others charge for a similar job? I found it interesting that the offer to my husband was made late on a Friday afternoon with a request for an immediate answer so there would be little time to check other places for estimates. We called one of our church elders who is a general contractor. He gave my husband the names of local people who do the same work and are reliable. He said if we did hire this guy, not to give him any money until the job was complete. Hubby has decided to tell the other paver not to come Monday and wait until he has more information before hiring someone. Was the first paver a scammer? I don't know. But I know he used an approach that scammers often use. First, they approach you and say they are doing work in your area and will give you a real bargain because of that. Then they want to start immediately, without giving you time to think about your decision or compare prices. We badly need to do something about the driveway. It's so rutted now I'm afraid to drive up that hill. It will be even worse when this rain stops, I think. But we weren't considering a paving job yet when this man approached my husband. It's possible that some neighbor had sent him after he completed a job for them, but he didn't say where the job nearby was. No matter how bad we need the driveway fixed, I don't want to throw away $4,000 to a scammer right before property taxes and income taxes are due. If this man had approached you, what might you have done? He was only going to pave the sloped part of the driveway where the ruts are really bad. Have you ever been scammed because of making a decisions too quickly? Have you known anyone else who has been?