Here’s a good lesson. If you hire a contractor ALWAYS check his license with the proper agency. If it’s in the city that’s the Department of Consumer Affairs.
Sophia and Lenny DeVirgilio hired Robert Guddahl. They needed their Broad Channel home rebuilt after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. They paid Guddahl more than $53,000. Now they wonder what he did for his pay.
“We trusted him! He sounded like he knew what he was doing!” A lot of people in this kind of situation might have the same comment as Sophia.
Howard: “You signed a contract for 300 to 500 thousand dollars worth of work and you only paid the guy 53-thousand dollars for him shoring up the frame and packing so he stopped working?”
Sophia: “Right, which I didn’t think was unreasonable until I looked at the house!”
“I said let me take a look under the house,” Lenny told me. “I said I’m not a builder, but I know what treated wood, brand new wood looks like. I said there’s nothing under there! My wife said what do you mean? I said there’s nothing under this house.”
Howard: “No new timber, no ties, no metal?”
Lenny: Nothing.”
I tried to find Robert Guddahl. He wasn’t at his office. So I got him on the phone. I asked him point blank, “Sir, I’m going to ask you one more time are you a licensed contractor?”
He wouldn’t give me a straight answer. That’s probably because the city Dept. of Consumer Affairs tells us, Guddahl is not licensed as a contractor. That means he had no business taking this job in the first place.
Lenny and Sophia filed a complaint with the New York Attorney General. And they’ve hired a new contractor to do the job right.
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