DJ Frustration Gone Wild

Avoid a Nightmare this Halloween: Thirteen Questions to Ask When Interviewing General Contractors

2007-10-26T15:13:00.000-04:00

As you all may or may not know, I work as a Project Manager for IBM. We're in the process of renovating our house and I recently spent some time looking for advice on interviewing and selecting a General Contractor. After looking around for a little bit, I couldn't find a single source for obtaining a list of questions every homeowner should ask when interviewing or evaluating their GC. So I came up with the idea of using my experience in Project Management and surveying my friends and family to publish a word document for others to use as well.

Here are some of the questions I've included in my Word doc:

How long has your company been in business & what is your license number for the county?
What level of insurance do you carry and would you provide a proof of insurance for our review?
How many people would you use? Are they staff or brought on as needed?
What work do you subcontract and what do you do in house?
Would you accept a project with milestones, penalty clauses and early finish bonuses?
How do you handle changes to the project discovered during the job?
What types of contracts would you prefer: Fixed Price, Cost + Materials w/ Profit, Not To Exceed?
What will the payment schedule look like?
What kind of warranties do you offer on your workmanship?
Who will be the project or site supervisor and will that person be on site full time?
Can we expect to see the same workers on site everyday?
What other projects are you working on right now? May we visit a site where work is in progress?
Please provide names & phone #’s of 3 homeowners that you’ve completed projects for:

Feel free to send comments/feedback so that we can improve this document and make it as good as possible. The list of contractor horror stories grows every day and if we all did a little due diligence prior to hiring, hopefully we can weed out the good from the bad. Best of luck.

Link to the word document - Questions for General Contractors.

Google Killer Zotspot Launches - Users Get Paid to Search

2006-05-30T12:52:00.000-04:00

Recently I attended the launch party for an intuitive website and I have a prediction to make. Search engine, Zotspot.com has just launched the next Google killer. I'm sure we've all read the headline before but I truly think Zotspot is onto something.

Eveyone knows that Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and the multiple other search engines/portals achieve their revenue primarily through advertising. Isn't the next evolution of that business model to reward users of the respective search engines? I think so.

Enter Zotspot.com, an Internet Searh Engine that pays its members to use it and refer others. Started by Mark Davis a graduate of Duke University and his brother, Zotspot's mission is to "share the riches of the Internet search industry with you, the consumer." Users earn money by using the engine (no, clicking on ads will not earn you more) and referring other users. For those who don't feel comfortable ripping off Madison Avenue for your own personal gain, you can donate all or a portion of your earnings to charity.

How much can you make referring people and using the site? Zotspot estimates that each referral who uses zotspot as their primary search engine will generate between $0.25 and $0.50 for you per year. That may not seem like a lot, but it adds up quickly. Here is an example of how much money you can earn:

Anyways, I thought I'd write up a quick blurb on this fascinating website that I just recently learned about. Hope you all enjoy using it and feel free to click this banner to get me a referral. After that, just create an account (they will never spam you) and viola!

For Guys About to Pop the Question

2006-05-26T10:19:00.000-04:00

I'll start things off on the new blog by discussing a topic that a good friend of mine (wink wink) knows very well. That good friend ;-) hasn't officially popped the question to his girlfriend yet but has made incredible strides in preparing to do so.

If you've ever wanted a way to comparison shop that jeweler of yours on the diamond that they just pitched you, check out Pricescope.com. Not only does Pricescope let you comparison shop online vendors for loose stones but they have tutorials on diamonds, a vivrant forum where you can read about all aspects of diamonds, catch up on proposal ideas, see pictures of other people's diamonds and settings (which could help you or your girlfriend decide what looks good) and they also provide tips on buying safely.

You must be saying to yourself, how reliable is it to purchase a stone off the internet? Ah hah! They also provide links to local independent appraisers and discuss what you should expect from working with an appraiser.

One quick story and then I'll end this entry. A few weeks ago, after meeting with a local vendor and obtaining copies of the GIA certificates for the stones he showed me, I went on Pricescope to compare his prices. I entered in the same specs for one of the stones he showed me. To my surprise, not only did I find the same specs but I was looking at the same exact GIA certificate number. The stone was being sold through multiple vendors online for over $1k cheaper than the local vendor was offering.

To sum things up, over the past few months, I've been doing my reading online, visiting with local vendors for loose stones and comparison shopping them online. I worked with an appraiser here in NYC and had multiple stones shipped to the appraiser for viewing without spending a dime out of my pocket. When I found the one I liked, I wired the $ to the online vendor and I walked out of the appraiser's with the stone in my hand.

If anyone wants to become more informed, comparison shop your jeweler or save a large chunk of $, check out the Pricescope approach. I did!