What actually protects you.
Four things, all working today: contractors are licence-checked against the CSLB registry before they can bid, scope and price are signed by both sides before work starts, completion requires photographs, and the full message history is kept.
Licences checked against the CSLB registry
Before a contractor can bid on anything, we check their licence against the full California state registry — the same lookup you could do yourself at cslb.ca.gov, done every time. We match on name and ZIP, not just a licence number, so nobody bids on someone else’s credential. Licences are re-checked, so a lapsed one drops out rather than quietly staying up.
A written scope and price, signed by both sides
Scope, price and timeline are agreed in a contract both parties sign before anyone picks up a tool. There is no “we’ll work out the price later”. The document is generated from the contractor’s own terms and fixed at signing, so neither side can quietly change it afterwards.
Photo evidence of the work
Completion requires photographs, submitted by the contractor and kept with the job. It is the difference between a disagreement about what was done and a record of it.
The whole conversation is retained
Every message between you and your contractor stays on file, including anything the platform refused to send. If a job is ever disputed, it is reviewed against the signed contract, the photos and the full history — not against whoever recalls it more confidently.