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Homeowners aren’t the only ones who engage in spring cleaning. Traveling home repair crews look forward to it, too. Their goal is to clean out your wallet. The scams usually involve a worker in a truck or van and several accomplices, often the worker’s own children. The accomplices will go door-to-door, urging homeowners to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity.

They’ll claim to have surplus construction material from a job down the block and offer it to the unsuspecting homeowner at a deep discount. There are numerous variations of the home repair scheme. The most common involve substandard driveway resurfacing with materials that wash off in the first rain to unprofessional and unnecessary roof and chimney repairs.

Police nationwide have volumes of complaints about these clever con artists, who generally leave town before authorities can track them down. But the reality is that homeowners are the ones with the real power to shut them down.

These traveling repair crews would out of business tomorrow if homeowners would follow time-tested principles for hiring contractors.

• Never hire anyone who solicits business door to door.
• Never hire a company without a verifiable address and phone number.
• Never use an unlicensed contractor — and never believe a contractor has a license unless you personally verify it with city or county regulators.

Although a license alone is no assurance of quality workmanship, it gives you several layers of consumer protection. It guarantees that authorities will be able to find the company if something goes wrong and provides leverage to get your money back.

 If a licensed contractor botches a job or fails to complete one he started, then consumer investigators may be able to force him to make restitution. When you hire an unlicensed contractor, then you are on your own.

Traveling con artists are a national problem. Lawmakers in Indiana, for example, are considering legislation that would make home repair fraud a felony in cases where the victim is 60 or older. It’s not a bad solution. But the best one is simply learning to say no when a stranger bearing news of bargain home repairs knocks on the door.

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