What to do when hired contractors stop communicating
Contractors often go silent for days over weekends or fail to respond to texts and voicemails once they have your money, leaving you stranded for hours waiting for answers. This communication blackout leaves you guessing whether to drop them or keep waiting, making it impossible to keep your project moving.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1finding a different contractor who communicates better
- 2Waiting up to 24 hours for a response and assuming the contractor is busy working or quoting new jobs
- 3Asking workers on-site for scheduling updates, who then redirect to the boss
- 4Asking the contractor directly about their typical reply time to set expectations
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Five times I have had to wait over 10 hours to get an answer, only twice was the answer within the hour.”source ↗
“When I call it goes to voicemail, when I text it gets delivered.”source ↗
“But seeing as how the boss already has my $$ I wish he was a bit more prompt.”source ↗
“should I not work with the "partner" contractors who don't call after a few days ... and then not over the weekend . and then not on Monday?”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 2How to handle a struggling contract-to-hire employee who isn't working out