Preview

Ghost Contractors: Home service contractors who show up for work, accept your money, then suddenly disappear without having started or completed the home project.

The phrase ‘Ghost Contractors’ is undoubtedly vernacular outside the norm of discussion about preventative home fraud. Yet in a very real mystical sense, there is such phenomena as ghost contractors. In this guide, we will consider two ‘true home fraud’ stories to clearly dissect exactly what these are and how we can expose their seeming invisibility-visibility. It is only when we are able to see what is normally unseen by many unsuspecting residents that we can avoid such aberrations. Foremost, we can define what ghost contractors within the context of this very special homeowner’s guide. Then we will detail exposing them for what they are and subsequently spare ourselves the plight of being victimized by them.

Prime Example Of “Ghost Contractors”

Earlier in August 2023, there was a report released out of Bell County, Texas. It was an expose’ of a handyman who drummed up clients using an app on a widely known social network. Although it is based in the US, its reach is international. This being the case, it goes without saying that it is very probably in all the states if not still expanding domestically. We can infer that this handyman had latitude to create his app in any state where the mega social network is located, and to travel to any of these at any time to make a personal appearance at your home.

Sightings in Temple, Texas

The mysterious handyman reportedly materialized in the flesh to many private home decision makers in Temple, Texas. Apparently, in keeping with the story, residents used his app because he advertised it from the sub-demographic area of the social network which happened to service, as mentioned, Temple, Texas. This is probably the leading reason the people of that vicinity used his app: it was local. But he had a peculiar modus operandi [m.o.], or ploy: in part, he used the app as bait for unsuspecting private home decision makers who needed work on their property. He relied on their gullibility to believe he was trustworthy without their first doing a service validation or deep reputation check on his competence and reliability. Most importantly, it may serve well to note that there were multiple residents he scandalized over an unspecified period of time. No way he could have visited all his victims in one or two days. Essentially, he created an unerasable trail of a number of local police reports. By inference, it does not seem that any of these unfortunate people bothered to at least put forth this miminal effort to inquire. Intuitively, had they done so, it is highly plausible they will have avoided doing business with him.

KINDLE ...... in an instant