WINK Investigates: How to protect yourself when hiring a contractor

Our newsroom emails are still filling up with people complaining about contractors, especially Beattie Development.

Their offices were raided by Cape police on Aug. 7.

We’ve shown you how the number of official complaints has more than doubled since we broke the story, so we wanted to figure out the best advice we could give anyone considering building or remodeling.

Beattie Development customers are angry. We showed you Beattie’s offices being raided by police as it happened. Dozens of people complained. The company took their money and didn’t build what they were supposed to.

Dig a little deeper, and you’ll hear that there’s more to the story.

Beattie was at one time a top-rated builder around here, and many customers who are now out thousands, some hundreds of thousands, did research who they hired.

“We’re smart people, and we thought we had vetted him, right?” said Kristen Kramer last month. “We looked a lot on social media. We went to the Better Business Bureau. I mean, we’re doing a lot of looking and digging, and everything was really good, and then all of a sudden, there were so many warning signs in the very beginning,”

We discovered that if you’re going to build or remodel, you’d better learn to find those warning signs on your own.

“In many cases, they can go to the Department of Business and Professional Regulations website and find out,” said attorney Adam Linkhorst in Palm Beach County.

Linkhorst gets calls from people here on our coast with contractor problems.

“Oftentimes, if contractors are having a lot of problems, other folks will post things,” Linkhorst said.

But we found that after all the Beattie complaints we’ve gotten, and a police raid at their office, the DBPR website shows no complaints for Beattie and an active license.

While the attorney general has 38 complaints now, up from 15 when we last checked, they are not searchable on the website, so you won’t find them there.

Cape police aren’t talking. Only the Better Business Bureau now shows an “F” rating, but that took months and a lot of unanswered complaints.

“Ask for references and not only get the references but call them up,” Linkhorst said.

Ideally, at least one person has just finished a project, one who is on a project and one who is just starting.

Search social media carefully for emerging patterns of complaints, and don’t forget the clerk of court’s site for lawsuits.

“And you start adding up all the little bits and pieces,” Linkhorst said.

It can save you from not just paying for something you don’t get but paying twice because of a subcontractor not being paid and putting a lien on your house even though you paid your contractor.

“The big picture is Florida legislation needs to change,” said Jason Yoraway, a former Beattie Development customer.

Meantime, the bottom line is you’ve really got to protect yourself upfront.

Another important step is to get your own lawyer to review the contract up front to make sure you understand things like what happens if building material prices go up in the middle of the project.

No one at the company has been charged. Bottom line: you are your own best protection.