SeamlessGutters

One of the salesmen that is going to start throwing me work is selling jobs through Home Depot.

I was just curious as to how he is making anything by subbing the work out to me.

Do you need a contractors license to do work for the Home Depot, or Lowes?

I do have a LLC, and am fully insured, but do not have my contractors license. Basically I am curious to know if I can just start selling directly through them or if a contractor licenses is required.

If it helps, I do seamless gutters in central Minnesota.


Thanks, Ryan

Tinstaafl

Not in Pennsylvania, but we don't have that licensing here.

On second thought, we do have licensing requirements in the larger cities (at least, a mercantile license is required in certain areas). Your answer is going to depend on your own state and local requirements.

Hoven

I looked into that a few years ago and walked away shaking my head. To many rules, regs, and red tape plus they tell you what the job is worth and and when to do it, and when your done the home owner will tell his buddy Home Cheapo did it. Their market share grows and your business name is eclipsed. I say invest in yourself forget those punks.

easy sider

Lowes and Home Depot require you to do submit your employees to Choice Point for a back ground check. They also require you to list them as insured on your auto and business liability insurance. They pay piece work simalar to Sears.

Out-Sider

Not sure about the licensing end of it, but the HVAC company I worked for once did work through them. Spent a lot of time doing bids and got very little work for it. If people are serious about having work done, they'll find a contractor, not price shop at Home Depot out of curiosity. Just something to think about...

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www.jbexteriorsinc.com

grob62

Gutters may be a different story, but I did doors through a contractor who had 27 HD stores in Chicagoland. We had to schedule, and get our info back to the GC within 24 hours of receiving our joblist, and sometimes they would send like 50 storm doors in a day. Imagine trying to call 50 people when you get home at night to schedule.....Not to coo....It wasn't bad if everything went well, but sometimes you would have to go to 2 different stores throughout the day, and sometimes they would sell a "no measure" door, and you would get out there and find out they needed extra material and labor, (build out for sidelights) which the homeowner would frequently balk at and try to claim I was scamming them, and cancel the order which meant you had to return the product to the store for a less than satisfying trip charge. When I finally said "no more storm doors", they would send entry and patio doors, which was O.K. I could do 2 entry doors, or 1 patio door per day and it wasn't bad...But eventually they would start sending storm doors again...Let me tell you... A storm door customer is the worst customer in this business. They are the pickiest customer because they can totally focus on the door, which takes less than an hour to install.. Home Depot customers always think they can always do the job better than you, but they just didn't have the time, and they are the cheapest of the people out there who will nit pick you till your blue in the face.....You are always referred "the guy from Home Depot"....Even though we have our own insurances, and years of experience, hell I'm even incorporated. Way too much stress and aggrevation for what you get.

After some time the GC ended up holding $1200 dollars out of my checks for an "escrow" account in case they had to send somebody to repair one of my jobs... Which I was none too happy about, but did get back when I left. When they tried to get me to sign some agreement stating that they could garnish my wages, if I didn't get my paperwork turned in every day, I said "enough". I luckily had a standing offer from a previous contractor, whom now throws me about 80 % of my workload, and life is sooooooo much easier. Going from 30 jobs a week to 2 or 3 jobs a week is much less stressfull.

nEighter

run run run... then run some more. Unless you are used to standing on street corners now...

easy sider

We set up with Lowes last year but have never done a job for them. The install coordinator has installation requirements that don't reflect manufacturers install requirements. Lowes install supervisors, for the most part, have no real experience working with the products they install and most of their knowledge is from seminars and literature. Siding and all other home improvement sales originate at the store with no real salesman selling the home owner a job. They will send an installer over to measure the house and supply a detail.

Tinstaafl

And installers come and go faster than the seasons. Though in theory, most jobs that you measure and detail, you will do if the HO contracts for it. But quite often you'll be asked/told to go do a job that someone else did the detail on--and boy oh boy, that's when the fun starts.

genecarp

DONT DO IT--------

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TRC

i can't speak for hd but at lowe's it can work. Things are a lot better than they were even 2years ago. Most stores now have only 3 or 4 installers in each category that have been with them a while and have excellent customer scores. The paperwork is sometimes overwhelming but if you have a good relationship with one or two stores and only work for those stores it's not bad. You can expect to close on 80% of the jobs you detail. I know in New Jersey there's a very long waiting list of contractors looking to get in.