Amen!

I had a contractor my Realtor recommended do work on my house after I bought it, before moving in. Very fast moving, to the point of not leaving me enough time to actually respond to things before he did work. (I had told him I had a tight turnaround, but to this day I have molding that is not at all what I would have selected if I'd had another 24 hours to actually look into it and respond to him.)

His electrician was also completely incompetent. I've never seen an electrician who didn't know the difference between an RJ45 connector and an RJ11. Or who didn't know the difference between Cat6 cable and coax cable. Or whose idea of "put a connector on these bare wires" was "cut them shorter by a foot and not actually cap them off." Yeah, seriously.

The most important point, though, is the itemized list. Adam's totally spot on on this one. I had an estimate from my contractor at the start, and periodic payments. At various checkin points I noticed additional things and asked "what would it cost to do X while you're at it?" He then went ahead and did them, then at the end send me a bill for the remainder that was several thousand dollars higher than the estimate. I asked him for an itemized list of what he had done, and he flipped out and started threatening me with legal action, with workers picketing the house, and with not fixing me up with a nice girl he found. (No, I'm not kidding. He really said that.) I kept asking for just the itemized list so I knew what I was even paying for, and he kept continually refusing and then sent me a revised bill for even more, with no explanation.

I eventually gave up, sent him a check for the remainder and a little bit (but not the full extra he was asking) and told him to get lost. He never did anything to me. I'm pretty sure he eventually went out of business. :-)

You can't have enough detail when dealing with 5-digit dollar figures and the place you live.

Thanks for the writeup, Adam!