Sounds good if not for this....
Like it or not, it's a sellers market in most areas of the country. Contractors have all the work they want and are not interested in dealing with demanding customers. It's sad but it's true.
Hasn't stopped me from getting things done. The hacks leave, and the people who want to do a job and do it right get paid. If someone finds
that demanding (backing up their promises), than that person does not deserve to work in that field.
Most of my trouble involves jobs that typically are done by weekend warriors. The big stuff is handled by paper, but calling up someone to bush hog a few acres or just move some wood...
For ****'s sake. It's hard to get someone to show up, paper or not.
A contract by itself guarantees nothing - it must be enforced by a court. If you end up there, everyone loses except the lawyers. Does that mean you shouldn't bother with written agreements? I don't think so. The process itself has value by ensuring both parties expectations are aligned and hopefully avoiding problems down the line. It doesn't have to be a 50 page document. Signing a detailed proposal is better than nothing.
A contract does indeed align interest.
Beyond that, what a contract does is cut through
tons of tape, so when things do go wrong, it's a much faster solution. Rather than fighting with piles of paperwork and hearsay, it's just a matter of did you do what you were supposed to do or not? It can be proven immediately.
That's a relatively easy question to answer in any court, and the lawyers get paid what they're paid for the time. I get my money back, so it's no sweat off my back. It's padded enough to cover lost profits and the costs associated with retrieval.
Three pages can contain everything needed most of the time, and at least one of them is largely blank, and there are a lot of spaces between paragraphs and lines.
Most of the details will be covered under their own documents. You can reference that in yours to save time and keep it all smooth; but that means you get in there and read the hell out of theirs.
People are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for houses, and tens of thousands for garages, here. You wouldn't buy a television under the contracts they use some of the time, and yet people do it.
That's why so many contractors screw people over. It's not much of a gamble for them in the short term. People rarely fight back properly, and almost never read the full terms on offer.
If a contractor isn't willing to accept reasonable payment terms that protects both parties and document your basic understanding of scope and quality, you proceed at your own risk.
That's true, and people need to know that showing up unarmed to a paper fight makes no sense at all.
