Letter to Editor | Disastrous handyman encounters

||| FROM KEVIN and JENNIFER BERRINGER |||

I am writing in about our recent encounters with so called handyman on San Juan Island. An epic topic amongst most all my neighbors. Do qualified, skilled and licensed handymen really exist? We have been working on a year long house renovation. We have been fortunate to have done most of the work ourselves, minus a few major things like tile work that we hired out. What we have learned from our experience, we would love to pass on our knowledge to other islands. A few dumb mistakes, we should have known better but nonetheless, lessons worth learning and telling to others so they make more sound choices.

So, the lessons we learned…first, verify references up front and check on the Labor and Industries site to verify the handy person you hire is licensed, bonded and has no major complaints. I know, very hard to do when you finally get someone to show up and commit to your project! Second, don’t pay any deposit or pay in full until the work is complete and approved by you. After dealing with another handyman, sadly we hate to say for way too long, nine long months and not much of anything was really completed. The guy was as slow as could be! When it came to the tile work on our shower pan, it was not really happening in any reasonable fashion and we finally parted ways!

The next tile guy, he seemed ready to tackle the job, even with all the shoddy work from the previous guy. He seemed to have a solid game plan so with a firm bid in hand, 1/3 down deposit, off we went. He said he would be coming by with his assistant to set up his new tile saw. We made it clear we only wanted to hire one tile person and not two. We were very impressed, we thought we are in good hands.

Then we saw the material getting disposed of badly, a major red flag. We told him we need to be more mindful of supplies and we want as little waste as possible. Then the borrowing of our tools and misuse of tools and supplies in the home getting damaged, it was very concerning. The assistant was a constant companion, a local dentist, yes, you read that correctly. We thought this is OK it makes sense to us that maybe working on teeth is like working on porcelain tile. It seemed OK to us, as both claimed to have worked for a local high end builder.

It seemed so impressive but yet still awaiting a full reference report from the builder. After more continued bad work my husband called them and well, they quit. We were ready to fire them at that point so we thought OK we are back to more damage and here we are having to start all over again. Then the head guy was demanding another $1,100 from us for the dentist. Then we saw an expensive part from our bathroom project was missing, and we contacted the guys. Upon reaching out to the head guy he said they would look for the part and if they did not have it, they would pay us for it. How odd and suspicious. Even more suspicious, the dentist told me he was working on his own bathroom remodel. The head guy sent me several text messages with some colorful language that basically led up to them justifying keeping the stolen item.

At this point, we filed a theft report into the Sheriff’s Dept. and contacted Labor and Industries. The investigator for the State within minutes verified they were not licensed and he was able to look up employee records with the builder they stated they worked for and there was nothing on record. The end result, the investigator gave him a choice to either pay us our deposit back or take the $1,000 fine from the State. The head guy of course took the penalty to the State and he has 60 days to pay it in full. He cannot do further work unless he gets properly licensed but of course we know he is still out there doing work illegally.

The head guy kept on about how he was owed additional money from us and the investigator stated you are owed nothing, as you have to be properly licensed and bonded. The investigator said these guys really had a solid scheme to present themselves like a handyman business. The investigator said the first red flag, you never give a deposit, especially when we provide all the supplies. Now they took our money and when things were going South they left us with more problems. Hard lesson learned! The investigator stated the head guy admitted he has not done much tile and that is why he invited the dentist in, who has more experience. The investigator asked him then why did you take this job, when you have no experience?

The reason WHY the investigator took the case and made it top priority, because in 25 plus years he has never had such an odd case where a dentist was involved. The dentist was able to get out of the $1,000 fine himself as his name was not on the bid. Even with our provided photo. But, like the State investigator stated, he must not be a very good dentist to moonlight on the side like a handyman and he is not even licensed and bonded to do this type of work. He said this makes no sense!

We used to reside on Orcas island and at the time in early 2000 when we were building, we had fantastic tradespeople who were licensed, bonded and actually took great pride in their work. How did we end up with opportunist and unlicensed tradespeople taking over and hurting our island community. Let’s get our skilled workers back again, they must be out there!