How to find a good contractor
Instead of ringing ten numbers off classified ads and hearing “I’ll call you back”, you describe the work once — and contractors from your area come to you. Below is the whole process step by step, and under it the things that usually decide whether a renovation ends well: how to describe the job, how to check a company, and what to agree before anyone picks up a tool.
Step by step
The whole flow from the client’s side. It takes a few minutes and at no point do we ask you for money.
- 1
You describe what needs doing
You open “I need a contractor” and describe the work in your own words — what, where and roughly when. You do not need to know trade names or rates; working out the category is our job.
- 2
You confirm you are a human
A code from an email. It is the only barrier in the whole process and it is there so contractors do not get enquiries from bots. Your account is created along the way — no separate sign-up and no password to invent.
- 3
The job reaches the board and local contractors
It appears publicly on the job board, and at the same time goes to contractors in your trade within at least 100 km. Your phone number is NOT part of the listing.
- 4
Contractors come to you
Instead of calling ten people, you wait for the ones who have time and actually want the job. Responding is free, so the ones who reach out actually want the job.
- 5
You pick one
You see the responses, the contractors’ profiles, their finished work and their reviews. Contact opens only at the moment you choose — and it opens both ways: you get their number, they get yours. Until then nobody has your details.
- 6
Afterwards you rate each other
A review is tied to a specific job, so it cannot be bought or left “just in case”. The contractor rates you too — the same rule for both sides.
How to describe a job so you get sensible offers
This is the one part you fully control — and the one that most decides who responds.
A contractor reads your job between two other jobs, usually on a phone, and decides in fifteen seconds whether it is worth replying at all. “Bathroom renovation, Katowice” tells them nothing — they cannot tell whether you mean swapping a tap or stripping the room back to bare brick. With a description like that either nobody replies, or the people who reply are guessing at a price they will revise once they are standing in your flat. Both outcomes are bad for you.
A good job posting answers four questions: what exactly, how much of it, when, under what conditions. You do not need to know the trade — writing down what you can see is enough.
“Bathroom renovation, Katowice. Please quote.”
No dimensions, no scope, no dates. The contractor has nothing to price, so they either skip it or pull a number out of the air.
“Bathroom, 4.5 m², 1970s block of flats, Katowice Ligota. Strip the old tiles, new plumbing for a basin and a walk-in shower, tiles on the floor and half-height on the walls, fit the sanitaryware. I buy the materials. The flat is empty, weekdays are fine. Start in the second half of September, the date is flexible. I have photos and a floor plan.”
Area, scope, who buys materials, availability and a date range. That can be priced without a site visit — and whoever does come, comes with something concrete.
- Give the area or the dimensions — even paced out, they beat nothing.
- Say what stays and what comes out. This is the most common source of a later “that was not in the quote”.
- Settle who buys the materials up front. Quotes with and without materials differ several times over and cannot be compared.
- Add photos. One photo of the old plumbing tells a contractor more than a paragraph of text.
- Give a date range, not a single date. “September–October” gets more responses than “17 September”.
- Mention the awkward parts: fourth floor with no lift, nowhere to park, a dog in the house, weekends only. The contractor will find out anyway — better now.
- Do not put your phone number in the text. It gets filtered out, and contact opens on selection regardless.
We deliberately do not ask you for a budget. A stated range works as an anchor — quotes converge on the top of whatever you write instead of on what the work actually costs. Better to describe the scope precisely and compare what comes back.
How to check a contractor before you pick one
Fifteen minutes in the public registers can save months of grief. All of these searches are free and public.
Enter the tax ID (NIP) or the name and you see whether the business exists, since when, and whether it is suspended. A suspended business is not automatically a fraud, but it is a question worth asking.
If the name ends in “sp. z o.o.”, the firm is not in CEIDG. The court register shows the board, the registered address and whether the company is in liquidation.
The Ministry of Finance “white list”. It shows VAT status and the bank accounts the company may receive transfers into. A mismatch between the account on the invoice and the one on the list is a warning sign.
Profiles with these badges have had the documents checked by our moderators. It confirms the paperwork — it says nothing about the quality of the work.
Registers tell you whether a company exists. Whether it is any good is told by entirely different things — and those you look for on the contractor’s profile.
- Photos of finished work in the same category as yours. Pretty interiors lifted off the internet give themselves away: no mess, no dust, no glimpse of the neighbouring wall.
- Reviews with specifics. “Great guy, recommend” carries no weight. “Did the bathroom in 9 days, ran 2 days over and told me in advance” carries a lot.
- The contractor’s reply under a review — especially under a bad one. That shows how they will behave when something goes wrong at your place.
- Their travel radius. Someone driving 80 km each way may be much less keen to come back for a snag after handover.
- How they write in their response. A contractor who asks about details usually measures before quoting too.
One last thing, obvious and still effective: ask for the number of their last client and call. An honest contractor gives it without hesitating — it is the cheapest advertising they have.
What to agree before work starts
A contract does not have to be a long document from a lawyer. It has to be written down — even as a message you both keep.
For a typical flat renovation or a single service you are usually agreeing what Polish law calls a “contract for a specific work” (umowa o dzieło): the contractor undertakes to deliver a defined result, you undertake to pay for it. The law does not require writing — an agreement made over the phone is valid. The problem is that six months later nobody remembers whether painting the ceiling was in the price. So we write it down: not to go to court, but to have one shared version of what was agreed.
What is in the price and — just as important — what is not. Removing rubble, protecting furniture, cleaning up afterwards: those are separate items unless you say otherwise.
The amount, how it is settled, and an explicit list of situations where the quote goes up. An honest contractor will volunteer “if it is damp under the tiles, drying gets added”.
If the contractor does — do they show receipts and do they add a margin. If you do — who is responsible when something runs out mid-job.
A start date and an expected finish. On longer jobs it is worth splitting into stages — it is easier to notice early that things are slipping.
The safest is paying for closed stages, after accepting them. Paying for everything up front inverts the balance of power and has no good justification.
Settle it at the start, not at the end. Turning “it was going to be without an invoice” into “an invoice, please” after the work usually ends in an argument about VAT.
If the job is bigger — rewiring, structural work, a facade — add who is liable for damage to the neighbours and whether the contractor carries liability insurance. It is one sentence, and it settles the most unpleasant scenario that can happen.
Advance vs deposit — the difference that only shows up when things go wrong
Two words used interchangeably in conversation that mean very different things in their consequences.
An advance (zaliczka) is simply part of the agreed price, paid up front. If the contract is not performed, an advance is as a rule refundable — regardless of which side walked away. It neither punishes nor protects anyone; it is a prepayment and nothing more.
A deposit (zadatek) works differently and comes straight from art. 394 of the Polish Civil Code. If the side that gave the deposit fails to perform, the other side may withdraw and keep it. If the side that took the deposit fails to perform, the first side may demand twice the amount. In other words: a deposit hurts both sides, and that is exactly why it disciplines them.
The practical upshot is easy to remember: writing “zadatek” instead of “zaliczka” in a message changes what happens if the contractor disappears. So name it deliberately rather than by accident.
- An up-front payment makes sense when the contractor buys materials with it — it should match the cost of those materials, not half the job.
- A demand for a large sum up front “for travel” or “to hold the date”, with no materials behind it, is a warning sign.
- Pay by bank transfer, not cash. A transfer proves that you paid, and whom.
- Write it plainly in the transfer title: “zadatek” or “zaliczka”, and what it is for. Sometimes that is the only surviving record of the arrangement.
- The final instalment after handover, not before. It is the only moment when you have real leverage over snags.
What to do when a contractor misses the deadline or disappears
Order matters. Losing your temper first usually closes off a route you would want later.
Before you do anything — collect evidence. Dated photos of the state of the work, transfer confirmations, all the correspondence. Summarise phone calls in a text message (“confirming that we agreed…”). Without this, every route from here is a class harder.
- 1
Write, do not just call
A short message: what was supposed to be done, what has been done, by when you expect a response. Setting a specific, reasonable deadline is not spite — it is a precondition for most of the next steps.
- 2
Formally call for performance and set a deadline
If the contractor is working defectively or contrary to the contract, art. 636 of the Civil Code lets you call on them to change how they are doing it and set a deadline. Once that deadline passes without effect, you may withdraw from the contract or have the work put right by someone else at the contractor’s cost and risk.
- 3
When it is obvious they will not finish in time
If the contractor is late starting, or moving so slowly that finishing on time is no longer plausible, art. 635 of the Civil Code lets you withdraw without waiting for the deadline to pass. You do not have to watch the job stand still until the end of summer.
- 4
A formal demand for payment or refund
If you paid for something you did not get, send a written demand with a deadline and an account number. Registered post with proof of delivery, or an email with confirmation — something you can produce later.
- 5
Then: court, mediation, in extreme cases the police
For smaller amounts there is a simplified procedure, and in a dispute with a business the municipal or district consumer ombudsman helps free of charge. If someone knowingly took money with no intention of doing the work, that is no longer a civil dispute but a matter for law enforcement.
A separate matter: the contractor refuses to issue an invoice. A business is obliged to issue an invoice on the buyer’s request, provided you make that request within three months counting from the end of the month in which the service was performed. So ask right after handover, not at annual tax time when the window may already have closed.
And the thing that is easy to forget while you are angry: leave a review. Not to get even — a review that states facts (what was agreed, what happened, how the contractor reacted) is worth more to the next person than this entire page. The contractor has the right to reply publicly underneath, and that is information too.
This is general information, not legal advice. LocaYo is a listings service — we are not a party to your contract with the contractor and we do not handle payments or disputes. For larger jobs it is worth having the contract reviewed by a lawyer.
A few minutes, no sign-up to start and no fee at all. Contractors from your area will come to you.
And if you are on the other side
The board works both ways — here is the short version from a contractor’s perspective.
You see the ones that match your trade within at least 100 km, or further if you set it. You pay nothing to respond.
The client sees your profile, your finished work and your reviews — not only a number. The lowest price does not automatically win, especially with someone who has been burned by a cheap quote before.
You get the client’s number the moment they choose you — and they get yours. Until then neither side has the other’s details.
A closed job means a review pinned to your profile. After a few of those the profile starts working on its own, well beyond the board.
If what you are really after is a steady flow of clients, answering job posts is half the work. The other half is your own profile, the one clients call you from directly — we covered it in a separate chapter, and the trade-by-trade page for contractors lives at for contractors.
Frequently asked questions
What does posting a job cost?
Nothing. Posting a job, receiving responses, talking to a contractor and picking one are all free. We take no commission on the work — we do not even know what figure you finally agree on, because you settle between yourselves.
Will every contractor see my phone number?
No. Your number is not in the job text or in the page source. Contractors who respond see the description and the location, but not your contact details. Contact opens only once you pick a specific contractor — and then it opens both ways.
How many contractors will respond?
It depends on the trade, the town and the season — for common jobs in a big city responses come quickly, for a niche service in a village it takes longer. Responses arrive in your dashboard and notifications — review them at your own pace.
What if nobody responds?
The usual causes are a description that is too thin, no stated dates, or simply few contractors in that area. It is worth adding photos and dimensions, widening the date range, and checking the contractor directory — there you can call someone directly instead of waiting for a response.
Do I have to pick one of the contractors?
No. A job post is an enquiry, not a commitment. You can pick nobody, pick someone from outside LocaYo, or drop the whole idea. After a while the post disappears from the board on its own.
How do I check that a company really exists?
By its tax ID (NIP): sole traders are in CEIDG, companies in the National Court Register (KRS), and VAT status in the taxpayer register kept by the Ministry of Finance. Registry data is also in the GUS entity search.
Will LocaYo help me if a contractor botches the job?
We cannot promise that and we will not pretend otherwise. We are a listings service — we are not a party to your contract, we hold no deposit and run no mediation, so claims go directly to the contractor. What we do actually do: we moderate, we take abuse reports and we can hide a profile that breaks the rules. And the review you leave stays there for the next person.
How is this different from portals that sell contacts?
There a contractor pays for the mere chance to answer an enquiry, often alongside several other firms on the same job — and the cost of that contact comes back to you in the quote anyway. Here responding is free and the service earns from optional profile promotion. For you the difference is that a contractor responds because they want the job, not because they bought access to it.