Should reader inform prospective contractors they're competing for the job?

For several years, a reader we're calling Lil Magill, has known that the porches on a two-family rental property she owns and rents out were beginning to rot and were in need of repair. Finally, this summer, Lil decided it was time to take action.

Much to her chagrin, Lil found it challenging to find contractors who would respond to her emails or phone calls asking for a meeting so they could assess the porches and bid on the project. The neighborhood where Lil owned her property for several decades had become quite desirable among young renters over the past year because of its proximity to public transportation.

The contractors Lil wanted to use apparently were booked up with other projects. Nevertheless, she persisted, and managed to set up meetings with three contractors who had done similar work in the area.

At the first meeting, the contractor indicated he would put together a proposal for Lil and email it to her. Lil was thrilled that things were finally moving along and readied herself for meeting with the other two contractors.

Before the second contractor meeting occurred, however, Lil wondered if she risked angering the prospective contractors by not letting them know she was speaking other contractors before deciding who to use for the job.

"Am I obligated to tell each contractor that I have several people giving me bids on the job?" she asks.

Lil is no novice to working with plumbers, electricians, or other tradespeople. But in the past, she says, she tended to use the same person over and over again. The porches, however, were a bigger project than she typically had and beyond the scope of most of the tradespeople she'd worked with over the years.

"I don't plan to select the contractor based solely on the price," Lil writes. "I want to get a sense of how they say they'd approach the project. I also want to talk to people whose houses they've worked on before to get some references."

But now, Lil wonders if she broke some sort of ethical protocol by not letting the contractors know they were competing for the job.

Any seasoned contractor should know that he or she is competing for work when they put together a proposal for a project, particularly if there's no pre-existing relationship with the customer. Contractors also know that projects they bid on sometimes don't materialize for any number of reasons, whether they prove more expensive than the homeowner wanted to take on or simply the timing didn't work out.

If Lil wants to tell the contractors that several people are putting together proposals for the job, that's fine. She might find that doing so lights a fire under some of them to get their proposals to her more swiftly. But given the heated real estate improvement market, she shouldn't hold her breath that informing them of the competition will speed things up.

Lil has no obligation to tell each of the contractors that he or she is not the only contractor looking at the project. The right thing is for Lil to meet with the contractors, review the proposals, do any due diligence of their work she deems necessary, and then decide with whom she'd like to work. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 

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