Vdare- Adam Carolla has a new show on Spike Network–“To Catch a Contractor.” The theme of the show is to help homeowners who have been screwed by crooked contractors. Typically work is not done, or done badly, and the contractor then takes the money he’s gotten from the homeowner and runs. Carolla and his team find the contractors, confront them, and “persuade” the contractor to finish the job properly.
The show is entertaining. However, it’s typical of TV shows that ignore the elephant in the room. I’ve watched nearly every episode, and all but one of the shows I’ve seen have featured the team catching an obvious immigrant contractor. Here’s Carolla with Jose:
Everyone knows the Government is totally behind this.. for example: FEMA = Find Every Mexican Available.
“But, but… immigrants are doing the jobs Americans won’t.” (sarc)
Adam Carolla does bring comedy to some horrible situations. These contractors are the scummiest of the scummy. It’s always a take the money up front and split, with minimal incomplete subpar work.
One “contractor” who pulled crap in an earlier episode where he said he’d never do this again. He returned to fleece his buddy who served in the Corp. together in Iraq. The scumbag was, as seen with all of the episodes, a bonafide POS.
“Criminal Immigrants”
A friend of mine had one of these bastards named Montinez re-roof his home after a storm had blown a tree into it. Instead of repairing the numerous holes in the decking of the roof, the crew just laid new shingles over the open holes. My friend found out when he went onto the roof to inspect the work and stepped though the shingles and into the attic. I guess they were here for love.
Of course the rip-off artists are mexicans; the show is filmed in Calif. (I presume). The mexicans under-cut all the non-hispanic contractors there long ago.
You know something? When you hire an illegal and he fucks up the work, a legal citizen will charge you triple to do it right. LOL. I talked to a man who said a third of his business was fixing “unlicensed/un documented” mistakes.
No fucking shit. A while ago a roofing co. went through our neighborhood, over and over – post massive freak hail storm. They sold half the neighbors new roofs with the promise that the work would be covered by their insurance cos. WRONG. An old agent myself, I had me a bit of fun when they knocked on my door.
Anyway the bastards had the nerve to try it again six months later and I had even more to say then. AND I turned them in to a bunch of insurance cos.
Their crews were all non-english speaking, and did some of the weirdest shit I have seen done to roofs. But the co. owners had beautiful trucks and nice polo shirts – very professional looking.
TonyR hit it: the show is in California, where over half the population is Mexican…so DUH.
Here in Florida I’ve found “doing sh!t work” is the work standard.
The legal/illegal thing is NOT so much a deciding factor to the quality of the work.
But hambone and mja are right. To me the lesson to be learned is “Sometimes, ‘cheap’ is TOO CHEAP.”
You can get a 5-day-roof project done cheap and have it leak from the beginning (here, I’ve seen those done by both Americans and hispanics). Maybe I had good luck, maybe I paid enough to the right contractor, who happened to have 12 (yes you read that right) hispanic workers come and do a solid job in one day.
When I needed a contractor I used a white guy with a nice truck.
Oh, also we went to high school together and he was my best man when I got married.
5/5 would hire again.
yeah you hire a cheap illegal to do it, have to hire another to fix it, he screws it up too and so does a third, so then you have to hire an expensive anglo so you end up spending twice the money since an illgal is 1/3 the price of an anglo.
I’ve had two very bad experiences with Mexican workers. The last was ridiculous.
The last ones weren’t working for me but they had to get to certain points in their work before I could do my part. I would schedule time at the house when they said they would be ready. What a frustratingly waste of time that job was.
My first clue was when a good 3 days of work was predicted to be done by the next afternoon and it was 5:30 pm at the time. Several studs had to be replaced in 4 different rooms. I blurted out: ‘No way! Get real! That is not getting done in just one day!’
Over the whole course I never witnessed any of the crew actually working, They were always milling around and, of course, none of them spoke English.
I ended up telling the crew chief and the owner I would only stop by at the end of the day when I was done with all other work since they were never ready when they said they would be – not one more hour during valuable work time was getting wasted that could be productive with other customers.
I became unconcerned about trying to fit in convenient timing of my work. They didn’t care about my time – I stopped caring about theirs.
A 1 hour job ended up wasting 10 hours spread out over 2 weeks.
The owner of the home is a real estate manager that I get a lot of biz from. I told him if this crew is involved in a future job the price will be higher for the time waste that these guys force on you.
The other bad experience was a roofing crew that worked for a company owned by a white guy. A white guy was the salesman too.
The crew played the “Gringo Game” on me – “No comprende!”
So I kicked them off my property. I was pretty pissed when the company owner told me the huge one worked for him for 10 years and spoke English just fine.
The salesman was pretty pissed when a 1 day job turned into 4 and his commission was eaten up by them having to re-do some parts they were skipping and I caught them. Like replacing rotten wood.
One question: Where all da white crews at? Cuz I see little choice.