State-Sponsored Weatherization Scams
For the second time in the past 2 years I witness a contractor for a state (Massachusetts) sponsored weatherization program skip out on a lot of the work they’re billing the state for and leaving the customer thinking their house is now insulated. And these are sizeable amounts, $8-9k.
First case they skipped out on foam sealing in the attic, some wall blow in and they fabricated blower test result. We had them back over twice to address the issues and they fixed some but said they won’t do the foam sealing in the attic because it’s covered by blow in insulation – which they installed. My parents didn’t want to pursue it further. Their state “supervisor” who was there for all the visits and was supposed to check out the work had to be aware of this.
Now, a different contractor at my friends house, they didn’t even put any blow in insulation in the attic, didn’t build an attic stair cover, skipped the damming, didn’t install garage ceiling dense pack cellulose – all things that they billed the state for on the final contract. Those are just the things I can see. I’m guessing the blower test was faked too.
Has anyone dealt with this? I can complain to the contractor and their state handlers but I’m guessing they’re all in on this. There seems to be a lot of other cases from my google search but most people don’t know what is supposed to be done and how to check this work, I’m going to guess this is typical. It’s pretty brazen for them to skip out on something as big and easy to see as 18 inches of blow in insulation in the attic, they must not get caught often. What a waste of tax money. Is this a Massachusetts thing or do you guys see this in your states? What would you do? How would you deal with it? Thanks.
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Replies
I'd assume this isn't as uncommon as many would like to think. One of the big problems with government "free stuff" programs is that there tends to be a lot of fraud and abuse. Look at the issues with people scamming Medicare out of millions of dollars, for example.
The best way to deal with this would be to have the people checking the work be legitimate third party people, like energy raters. You never want the contractor doing the work to also be inspecting the work, since they have an inherent conflict of interest there. You don't want a buddy system of inspectors either, because you end up back in the same spot with the "conflict" being that the inspector doesn't want to rat out his buddy.
If they'll let YOU select someone to do an inspection (blower door, etc.), you're more likely to catch anything the contractor tries to sneak by. How exactly you'd go about reporting this I don't know, since I don't deal with your state, but there is probably a way. Whether or not reporting things really results in any positive result is another matter entirely.
Bill
Plus the fact that the charge to the 'state' is three times more than what it would cost to get a contractor to get in there and do it right. Who's paying and who's profiting?
This is an unfortunate side effect of government incentives. The contractors simply bump up the price by the amount of the incentive. The customer saves nothing and wealth is transferred from the gov't to the contractor. It does help keep weatherization contractors in business, I guess.