Anyone who has ever hired a contractor knows getting a good one is pretty much a crapshoot.

And, even if yours doesn’t rip you off directly, things are bound to take far longer than they promise up front.

OP’s dad didn’t have any rose-colored glasses, but he did his best to head off issues like mark-ups and doing things not quoted at the pass.

Years ago shortly after I moved out, my dad decided he wanted to remodel his bathroom and hired a local contractor(who I will refer to as DB) to do it that fixed a clogged sink for him once.

From the start my dad was extremely skeptical of contractors and did not want to get scammed, so after they agreed on the price for labor my dad ask him for an invoice for the cost of all the materials.

He took said invoice to one of his coworkers whose BiL was a plumber or in construction or something to look over the list of materials and see if the quote was fair, and right off the bat DB was trying to do close to a 50% markup on the materials.

So instead of paying DB’s invoice my dad just bought all the materials himself saying “he knows a guy who gives him amazing discounts” so DB doesn’t get suspicious that my dad was onto his game.

When he had to leave town he sent OP over to supervise, and he had to deal with some shady excuses here and there, too – including the guy trying to do electrical work that he hadn’t quoted.

After 3 months the bathroom is not close to being done despite DB telling him it would take 2 months, my dad had to travel for work and would be gone a week so he asked me to house sit/ make sure DB shows up to work and does not steal anything.

Right off the bat DB tries to be all buddy buddy with me but I did not like the guy and just brushed him off asking how the bathroom was coming.

Over the course of the week DB tried to up sell me on a bunch of things he said needed to be done to finish the bathroom, most of it was electrical work which he did not have a license for. My dad filled me in before he left about what was quoted in the labor and there was no electrical work quoted and I told him no just stick to the original quote.

Once my dad comes back I filled him in on all the additional charges DB tried to tack on. He also did not show up for 3 days saying he hurt his shoulder “tripping over his cat”, then he tried to install the new ceiling light which he was NOT asked to install because we had a electrician coming to install it.

After a heated discussion between DB and I he stopped installing the ceiling light and started laying tile during which he broke a quarter of the tiles.

When his dad got home he did some research and learned the guy wasn’t even licensed, so he refused to let him in the house. The police got involved.

After this debacle my dad did some investigating and looked up DB’s license and found out that not only was the license expired it did not belong to DB!

So my dad asked my brother and I to come over when he was going to confront DB about lying about his license. A VERY heated argument broke out when my dad refused to let DB to enter the house to collect his tool and said we would bring the tools out to him. DB then threaten to press charges against me for “assault” when I accidentally brushed his shoulder when I was passing him in the hallway and I refused to apologize.

After the cops showed up DB quickly tried to play the victim but the cops told DB to collect his tools and leave.

The bathroom still unfinished but my dad did not have to pay DB for his 3 months of labor and used that money to hire real contractors to finish the bathroom, it only took them a week and a half to finish.

His dad wasn’t done, though – he went to the media.

After this my dad contacted the local news to tell them about DB being a conman.

A few months later the news did an investigation story about him and they found other people DB scammed, where DB would start to work on their bathroom but once he got paid he would cut and run leaving the bathroom unfinished and stealing all the materials.

The news then set up a sting for DB and exposed him for being a conman and he was arrested not long after the news story aired.

Now, this guy must realize he’s scammed the wrong man.

TL;DR – Bad man hired to redo dad’s bathroom, tries to rip dad off, dad fires bad man for lack of licenses and for being an ahole.

Dad tells local news about bad man, local news exposes bad man, bad man eventually arrested.

Would Reddit have handled things differently? Let’s find out!

This person says the guy sounds like a big ol’ drama queen.

This commenter says OP’s dad did everyone a favor.

They wonder why Dad didn’t do more looking into the guy before he hired him.

Because seriously, these guys are everywhere.

They had a high five for the journalist, too.

Everybody likes stories like these.

Too many bad contractors out there giving the good ones a bad name!