TLDNR: Find another contractor. Greg Dahl is shady and has a poor work ethic…read more
In February, we bought an older home that needs some love. Greg Dahl was recommended to me for work that needed to be done. The house needed new siding, new windows, had significant plumbing and electrical issues. I checked him out online and verified his contractor's license. He had one negative review and a clean license. It didn't seem to be a big deal to me, a lot of businesses have a negative review here or there.
Greg met us at the house during our final walk through before escrow closed and reviewed what needed to be done. It seemed like we were on the same page and he got us an estimate a few days later. When we first met him, he gave the impression he was a busy contractor with a crew working at another site. Spoiler alert: there is no crew. He has a single unskilled sub with his own badly reviewed home improvement business. We confirmed that Greg would be able to come Monday after close of escrow and complete the emergency plumbing and electric work.
Weekend before the work is to begin, Greg waves red flag number 1. He calls me to start backpedaling on grounding the outlets. He says it doesn't make sense to ground the outlets in advance of replacing the electric panel. This makes sense to me, so we agree that he will ground the outlets I need to work on my computer. He claims that surge protector will keep our other devices and appliances safe (this is not true). At the time I pointed out that outlets on interior walls won't be exposed by the siding project for grounding. There is no good response provided from Greg.
Monday morning (February 22) rolls around. He and his sub, Matt, show up and spend about four hours grounding a couple of outlets and fixing a drain clean out. This put a very small dent the massive amount of plumbing and electric work that needed to be completed. He had an attitude like he was doing us a favor, and we figured he really must be busy at another site.
Tuesday, Greg arrives a little after 8:00 spends some time on the phone before starting to work at 8:30 and ended his day at 10:45am. Wednesday followed a similar pattern. At this point Greg was satisfied that he had completed the work needed to make the house livable for the time being and was ready to go over the contract.
This is where I learned a big lesson. In addition to checking out his license on the Contractors State License Board (CSLB), I should have read through some of their information related to hiring a contractor. Greg wrote a nonspecific contract referencing an email he had sent to me. According to the CSLB brochure "Home Improvement Contracts Consumer Guide," they wish me "good luck" getting the right results. Well now I feel foolish.
It gets better, Greg quoted time and materials for plumbing and electric work. Guess what is illegal in residential home improvement contracts?
Icing on the cake, Greg put $0.00 down payment in the contract and then asked me for $8000.00 on the day we signed the contract "for materials." Yes, I stupidly paid it. In case you know as little as I did, this was illegal. The maximum amount of money a contractor can request when initiating a contract is 10% of the total contract or $1000, whichever is less.
I'm not sure how I was going to be able to cancel during the 3 day right to cancel period and have a chance of getting my $8000 returned. I actually got a phone call from my bank 15 minutes later to verify I wrote the check, that's how quickly he rushed to cash the check. Is the repo man after his truck?
When Greg left our house that Wednesday, he said he would return the end of the following week to finish the plumbing. He didn't return until March 15, two and half weeks later. During that two and half weeks, we hired other contractors to complete some of the work that desperately needed to be done and wasn't included in the contract. In the process, I did the research that told me I had been taken advantage of by Greg.
When I figured out that Greg had grossly overcharged me on the initial payment, I sent him an email asking that he provide me the receipt for the window order when he came on March 15. He arrived with the quote/proposal from his window vendor, dated that day, March 15. I told him that I had discovered from the CSLB that he could not legally charge me $8,000 deposit on the contract. To say he responded poorly would be putting it mildly. He then attempted to claim that $8,000 was a progress payment for work performed. That is some hourly rate for a progress payment, considering to that point he had worked maybe 8 hours total if I'm being generous. Here the CSLB advised only pay for work that is completed. He was also clearly unhappy that we had some of the work he intended to charge time and materials for performed by other contractors in his absence. I could go on, but I've hit the yelp limit.