# Question about dealing with professionals

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-dealing-with-professionals/1022403>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [August 22, 2025, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-dealing-with-professionals/1022403 "2025-08-22T20:14:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 13

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2025, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-dealing-with-professionals/1022403/13 "2025-08-22T23:09:19Z")

</div>

I’ve had this happen a lot. Probably the majority of contractors who have promised to give me estimates just ghosted me. I would not bother to contact them and ask what’s going on. My view is, if they’re this flakey before they even have the job, when they’re presumably trying to make a good impression, I don’t want to see what they’re like after I’ve signed a contract.

However, that being said, I don’t think that what the OP describes qualifies for disqualifying the contractor quite yet. A promise of 3-5 days and no contact after 7 (working) days is still borderline acceptable in my book. Unexpected things happen, and yes it would be better if they could predict their availability to write up the estimate a little better, but if they got me the estimate in the next few days I would excuse the delay. But after another week, they’re off my list. For a $5-6K job, I will be getting at least three estimates anyway.

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-dealing-with-professionals/1022403)._