The Real Faces of Elder Abuse: ARIZONA REGISTRAR OF CONTRACTORS (ROC) ALLOWS A CONTRACTOR TO SCAM THE ELDERLY

THE REGISTRAR OF CONTRACTORS (ROC) IS MAKING

PUBLIC RELATIONS NEWS BY GOING AFTER UNLICENSED CONTRACTORS.

ROC BUDGET

Unlicensed Contractors do not pay the annual dues to the ROC but they do pay a fines if caught. The ROC has a vested interest in going after unlicensed contractors for the fines because it is desperate for operating money. The ROC’s $12 million budget is stagnate with Arizona’s stagnate economy. The ROC just closed four state offices in a budget reduction move but that hinders Arizona consumers in rural communities for the filing poor workmanship contractor complaints.

The ROC has over 40,000 licensed contractors in Arizona. The ROC handles yearly nearly 4,000 complaints against licensed contractors and nearly 2,000 complaints against unlicensed contractors. The ROC received a negative audit from the Arizona Auditor in 2013 that it was failing to protect homeowners because of poor record keeping, failing to discipline contractors due weak investigations, and the washing of the Contractor Recovery Fund Trust to the state’s general fund. The ROC is in a state of reorganization since it just has had the former director, William Mundell, replaced with former ROC inspector Jeff Fleetham.

ROBERT FREUND

The ROC totally dropped the ball on our complaint concerning Robert Freund - owner of Palmers Kitchen Bath & Beyond (PKBB) and Palmers Plumbing Services (PPS). The reason for the ROC decline of our complaints was that we failed to allow the contractor to attend the ROC inspection of our house and failed to allow the contractor the opportunity to fix the over 60 poor workmanship problems. Those were all lies and the ROC inspector closed our complaints in one month without a complete investigation. Governor Ducey said he has no authority over the ROC decisions. We have investigated many other poor workmanship complaints we received from bad contractor victim homeowners and it is clear to us that the ROC’s performance is not improving.

GOVERNOR DUCEY IS UNABLE TO FIX ROC MISTAKES.

COURT VERDICT
PKBB V. FAIRALL

We have lost over $100,000 in repairing the problems and the drop of the house value. We did win the 17 months lawsuit that the contractor filed against us when Robert Freund failed to appear at the recent Pretrial Hearing. The contractor had tried to collect the unpaid $3,800 of the $13,700 already paid for substandard work. But our 400+ pages of evidence were over whelming that it was not owed. However, we lost $1,800 in our hard costs to defend ourselves from this baseless lawsuit. We did win and receive $65 for repayment of our cost to respond to the lawsuit. This is really not justice because went spent hundreds of hours fighting the frivolous lawsuit ourselves but we were not compensated for our time by Arizona law. .

Our bad contractor is still using false advertising and failing to obtain required building permits. The scam continues with poor workmanship by Robert Freund duping the elderly homeowners. The ROC is allowing bad dues paying licensed contractors to continue to operate because that agency is totally run by contractor dues/fines and “does not bite the hand that feeds it.” The Arizona homeowners need to be aware that state law favors contractor’s rights over homeowner’s rights. It is only a misdemeanor in Arizona to operate without a valid contractor’s license while in the majority of states it is a felony. Without strict laws and stringent law enforcement the Arizona homeowners will experience the continued increase of contractor crimes.