Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 29, 1995 TAG: 9505010011
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KIMBERLY N. MARTIN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Edward and Natelle Callis learned the hard way that looks can be deceiving.
Their new $12,600 garage and workroom is something that ``if you drive by, you'd be proud to have.''
But when a Salem building inspector gave it a once-over, he wasn't impressed.
Just months after it was built, the header over the garage door is buckling, the cement floor is cracking and the wiring is faulty. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The building inspector gave three pages of code violations to the Callises.
Yet Vernon Reynolds, an investigator with the state Board of Contractors, said the Callises should consider themselves lucky.
In some cases, ``You have to tear up the foundation and start all over again. ... They have a building that's very nice. There are some structural defects. But at the end of this, they'll have a $12,000 building. They'll have what they paid for,'' Reynolds said after a hearing Thursday in Salem Circuit Court.
Judge G.O. Clemens made sure of that.
He took an appeal by the contractor, Donald Ketron, under advisement, giving him four months to pay for the estimated $4,000 in repairs to get the garage to comply with building standards.
Ketron, who told the Callises he was representing New Image Construction, was given a $2,500 fine and a 12-month jail sentence in Salem General District Court in February for contracting without a business license and not having a valid building permit.
Reynolds said Ketron still has charges pending against him in Roanoke County.
These days, cases like Ketron's aren't uncommon.
In Southwest Virginia, home-improvement fraud is cropping up faster than spring tulips, said Reynolds, who spends his days cruising a 30-some-county area checking into contractor fraud. His mobile office - a crate full of books on Virginia law and envelopes filled with consumer self-help materials - is packed into the trunk of his car.
But when he shows up on doorsteps, he's often less welcome than the door-to-door contractors.
Natelle Callis was so wary of him that she initially wouldn't let him see the contract she had signed with Ketron. But after Thursday's trial, the Callises both warmly thanked the investigator for his help in recouping their investment.
In the past month, he's had six complaints like the Callises' referred to him by Roanoke's Better Business Bureau. The bureau's executive director, Fran Stephanz, said home-improvement fraud is the second most common complaint the agency gets.
Reynolds' advice to consumers is: Make sure the person is licensed, gives an address, and is listed in the phone book.
``You want to protect your interest before something happens, because even if they're caught, you may not get all of your money back,'' Reynolds said.
His words of wisdom sound simple enough, but many times he finds situations where people shelled out an enormous amount of money to a contractor whose calling card had no address, no working phone number and no name on it. They also had no contract.
That wasn't the case with the Callises. The couple did everything but check Ketron's license. The contractor was recommended to them by a friend.
``You can only do so much. Even the shrewdest of consumers can get burned sometimes,'' said David Beidler, a lawyer with Legal Aid.
by CNB