What to Do When a Contractor Takes the Deposit and Stops Answering

The calls stop first. Then the texts. Then you notice that the last message you have from him is eleven days old and says he will be by Thursday, and Thursday was a while ago now.

What you can do about it today is build the record. Write down the date you signed, the date you paid, the amount, the way you paid it, and every date he told you work would start. Save the texts. Photograph the site exactly as it sits, even if it sits untouched, because untouched is the thing you are documenting.

A contractor who has gone quiet and a contractor who is buried on another job look identical from your driveway. He is not necessarily gone, and that is the part that stalls people, because a homeowner who is certain he has been robbed acts in the first week, and a homeowner who is still giving a man the benefit of the doubt waits, and waiting is itself a decision about what is available to him later.

The next thing to find out is whether your deposit bought anything. A deposit that went to material means there is material somewhere with your name on the order. A deposit that went nowhere means there is nothing sitting in a warehouse to point at. The supplier on the order can tell you which one you are in, and he will tell you faster than the contractor will.

There is a second problem sitting behind the first one. A contractor who took your money and did not pay his own suppliers or subcontractors can leave people you never hired with a reason to come looking at your property for money you have already paid once. How that works and how the timing runs varies by state, and it is worth understanding before it shows up rather than after. See the mechanics lien guides.

Put the demand in writing and send it in a form that produces a receipt. A certified letter stating the date of the contract, the amount paid, what was promised, and what you want to happen next reads differently than a text message, and it exists afterward in a form you can hand to somebody else. Send it to the address on the contract, not to the phone number.

Rules about deposits and advance payments vary by state, and some states regulate them directly. This article is about what people commonly do, not about what any law requires, and it cannot tell you what your options are, because that answer depends on where the work is. For what your state actually says, see the deposit guides in the knowledge base.

There is a version of a service agreement where the deposit is not a payment made against a promise. The customer funds the contract before work begins. The money is held until each milestone is complete, and that portion releases to the provider. What changes for the homeowner is the position he is standing in on day eleven, when the open question is not where the money went but whether the milestone was met.

The position you are in is not a fair one. You did the ordinary thing, which was to pay a deposit to a man who asked for one the way contractors ask for one, and the ordinary thing is what put you here. The record you build this week will not feel like progress. It is the part of this that is still yours.