Reading a difficult customer early

She has told you two things before you reach the kitchen. The last contractor "butchered" the tile and walked off. And she would rather not talk about budget until she sees your number.

Neither one disqualifies the job. Plenty of people have been burned, and plenty of homeowners hate naming a figure first. But both are signals, and a signal you catch at minute eleven of a walkthrough costs nothing to act on. The same signal in month two costs you a change order you will never get paid for.

Below are the signals worth counting, with points in brackets. If they stack too high, turning a job down covers that conversation.

Signals on the first call

• "We don't need all that paperwork." [3] Many states require a written home improvement contract once the job passes a dollar threshold — $500 in California, $1,000 in Massachusetts — and several also dictate what it has to say. Your state licensing board publishes the rule. Either way, this is a customer refusing the document that protects both of you.
• Cash, no permit, can you start Monday. [3] Where a permit is required, it is usually the licensed contractor doing the work who pulls it, and skipping it is enforced against your license, not the homeowner's checkbook. Some places let an owner pull an owner-builder permit instead, which does not make the arrangement any safer for you.
• Every previous contractor was a crook. [2] One bad experience is common. Three, all abandoned or overcharging, with nothing documented, and you are in line to be number four in the story.
• A budget that never appears. [2] After two honest asks, someone describing quartz and a heated floor while saying "whatever it costs" usually has a number, and it is usually well under yours.
• Scope that grew between emails. [2] A job that gained a room before you priced it will gain rooms after.
• "Just give me a ballpark." [0] Not a flag. But give a wide honest range and say the site visit sets the price — a number said on the phone comes back three weeks later as "the price you promised me."

Signals at the walkthrough

• The decision maker is not there. [2] Normal on a first visit. On a third visit, the person approving your change orders has never seen the space.
• "While you're in there…" three times in twenty minutes [2], with no question about what any of it costs.
• The brother-in-law "in the trades." [1] An absent authority you argue with by proxy, through someone repeating half of what he said.
• Half-finished work nobody wants to discuss. [1] You may be tying into another crew's rough-in and inheriting its warranty question.
• Pushback on deposit terms before you have named an amount. [1] They are not reacting to your number yet — they are telling you how the payments will go.
• Access or approval nobody has settled. [1] A tenant who has not been told, an HOA that has approved nothing, a dog nobody will crate.

What the score means

Gut feel does not survive a good referral source or a slow month. Add the points up before you price anything.

• 0–2. An ordinary job on your standard terms.
• 3–5. Workable, with the terms below and the coordination time priced in.
• 6 or higher. The job in front of you is not the job described. Either the price and terms change to cover that, or you pass.

A bathroom that scores 7

Say a full gut of a 40-square-foot hall bath. The scope described on the phone prices out at about $22,400 — one shop's number in one market, not a benchmark for yours.

Two prior contractors, both blamed, nothing documented (2). Husband absent at both visits, and "he decides the tile" (2). A linen closet and a heated floor added between the call and the walkthrough (2). Her brother's opinion on waterproofing quoted twice (1). Seven points, and none of it is a reason to walk.

So the estimate changes, not the answer. It goes out at $24,900. The difference is 16 hours of project management and selections coordination at this shop's $95 rate, plus $1,000 for the second round of tile pricing a five-decision project reliably needs. Both appear as named line items. A "difficult customer" surcharge you cannot say out loud is not a line item, and a customer who reads it that way is right.

Terms that make a flagged job survivable

Two payments become six, each tied to an event a third party can verify.

That first row is deliberately small. Several states cap what you may collect before work starts, and the caps are not alike: in California, $1,000 or 10 percent of the contract price, whichever is less; in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, up to a third, each with its own carve-out for special-order materials; in other states, no statutory cap at all. See deposits for contractors.

Four more things belong in the paperwork. Every extra goes through a signed change order with its price and its schedule effect on the same page, before the work happens. Selections carry a written deadline and a stated consequence when it slips. Exclusions name the specific thing you saw — the neighbor's fence line, the unpermitted subfloor, the tile the customer is supplying. And photograph the site at the end of each day for the first week, dated: that is the week the "it was already like that" conversation gets decided.

Two more depend on where you work. Your right to stop work over a late progress payment usually comes from your contract, not from statute: several states have prompt-payment laws that let you suspend after written notice, but many exclude single-family residential work and the rest set their own notice periods. Preliminary lien notices run on short clocks — 20 days from first furnishing in California, other windows elsewhere — though a contractor holding a direct contract with the owner is exempt in some states, or owes notice only to a construction lender. See mechanic's lien basics. Deposit caps, stop-work rights and lien deadlines are all state law — confirm each with your licensing board or a local attorney.

Where DoneQuote fits

Tightened terms fail when they live somewhere the customer never reads. In DoneQuote the milestone split, the exclusions and the change-order rule sit on the document you send, and each revision keeps its own version — so when the scope shifts in week three you can point at what was agreed and when.

When a flag is not a red flag

A first-time homeowner asking forty questions is anxious, not difficult, and answers fix it. A customer who arrives with photos, invoices and a state board complaint about the last contractor is documenting — a good sign about how they will treat your paperwork. A commercial GC with retainage, lien waivers and a submittal process is not being unreasonable. That is the job.

Score behavior, not people. Turning work down for business reasons — capacity, scope, terms, price — is yours to do. Turning it down because of who the customer is, is a different question: federal law reaches race and ethnicity in contracting (42 U.S.C. § 1981), and state and local civil-rights laws add classes that vary from place to place. If a pattern in who you turn away would be uncomfortable to explain, talk to a local attorney before it becomes one.