Choosing a Painting Contractor
Choosing the correct painting contractor is extremely important. In the Central Florida area, there are so many to choose from. Make no mistake, there are several contractors out here that are knowledgeable about certain areas of painting. Example: Residential Painting or Commercial Painting or Industrial Painting. There are very few that can honestly say provide all 3 services on a daily basis. There are some very technical aspects of Industrial and Commercial Painting.
For starters, providing commercial painting services and industrial coating services, you must obtain higher amounts of general liability insurance, higher amounts of Workers Compensation coverages and commercial auto insurance coverage. That weeds most contractors out alone. The biggest factor that separates real commercial and industrial contractors from contractors who just say they are, is the knowledge, experience, credentials & education.
When choosing an Orlando painting contractor or any contractor, please be very careful! Choosing the wrong contractor could turn out to be one of the biggest mistakes you will ever make. I will explain in detail.
MOST, i repeat, MOST painting contractors in Orlando and the surrounding areas are not running legitimate businesses. Believe me, the person who suffers the consequences for hiring a contractor who is not 100% on the up and up, is you the customer.
Let me explain, what most contractors do is come to your home or place of business and talk a big game about how great they are and what they’ve painted. Am i right? They tell you how big of a company they are and that they have a huge crew of guys to do the work. They always use the terms employees. Do not be fooled when you look out your window and see a few guys wearing the same company t-shirt. That certainly does not mean they are employees of a company. 90% of the time, those guys are just a group of guys that the smooth talking contractor pays a flat fee to. In return, they handle your project. The problem with that is, if one of those guys get hurt on your property, you will undoubtedly be getting sued!!!!! If he is not an actual real employee of the company, he is not covered under that contractor’s workers compensation policy.
Make the contractor provide paperwork on every man working on your property.
If the gentlemen working on your house are not actual employees of the company you signed the contract with. The only possible way you can ensure your protection against being sued is to make sure every person working on your property is carrying an inc. or llc, occupational license, general liability insurance & workers comp. Please protect yourself!
If you want to check and see if your contractor is being honest about telling you that he employs a lot of people, just visit the Florida’s Workers Compensation website and see what his actual payroll is. If he has a lot of employees, he should have a big payroll $ number. If it is a small number, well i think you just learned something about your contractor. This kind of deception goes on everyday.
These contractors are the ones who are stating that they will beat anyone’s price and other phrases to that effect. Legitimate painting companies obviously have bigger overhead because they are actually doing business legally. Therefore their prices will be higher than these fly by nighters. Also, companies such as mine that follow proper business practices, also take much more pride in their work as well.
When it comes to the service industry, cheaper will never be better. You are not buying an object, you are buying a service.
