5 red flags a contractor quote is too good to be true

This is the single most reliable tell, because it is the mechanism the scam runs on. Money moves before anything can be judged.

Ontario's own guidance to homeowners is a down payment of no more than 10 percent, and never paying in full up front. British Columbia goes further and makes it law for direct sales: a deposit on a direct sales contract is capped at $100 or 10 percent of the total price, whichever is less, and exceeding that makes the contract unenforceable. In Quebec, an itinerant merchant cannot accept payment at all during the 10 days after you receive the signed contract. The Regie du batiment's advice is blunt: pay as small a deposit as possible before work begins.

Urgency is the tell that travels with it. Today only. My crew is in the neighbourhood this week. The price goes up Monday. Real contractors are booked out. They do not need you to decide before dinner.

In Ontario, any agreement for goods or services over $50 has to be in writing, and the law lists what it must contain. If the contract is missing required content, or the business made a false or misleading statement to get you to sign, your cancellation window stretches from 10 days to a full year. That is a real remedy, and it exists precisely because thin paperwork is how homeowners get hurt.

Ontario also caps the final price at 10 percent above the written estimate. If the number climbs beyond that without you agreeing to new work at a new price, you are not obliged to pay it.

Quebec is stricter still on identification. The contract must carry the contractor's exact legal name as it appears on the RBQ licence, the RBQ licence number itself, the NEQ, and the GST and QST numbers. A name that does not match the licence is not a paperwork slip. It is the whole problem.

Since 1 March 2018, Ontario has banned unsolicited door-to-door agreements for a specific list of products: furnaces, air conditioners, air cleaners, air purifiers, water heaters, water treatment devices, water purifiers, water filters, water softeners and duct cleaning services. If someone shows up uninvited and sells you one of those, the agreement is void, any related credit agreement is void, you are not responsible for goods received, and you can recover what you paid.

The exception matters: it only applies to unsolicited visits. If you phoned, emailed or asked a supplier to come out, the ban does not cover you.

British Columbia joined in on 1 August 2026, banning door-to-door sales of certain prescribed high-cost household goods and services, explicitly including furnaces and air conditioners, and banning the offering of credit arrangements during door-to-door transactions. In Quebec, anyone soliciting away from their place of business for more than $100 needs an itinerant merchant permit from the Office de la protection du consommateur, and you can look the permit up before you let them in.

One more Ontario measure worth knowing: as of 6 June 2024, the Homeowner Protection Act bans registering Notices of Security Interest against your title for consumer goods, and all previously registered NOSIs are deemed expired. That law exists because door-to-door HVAC and water heater sellers were quietly clouding people's titles.

Consumer Protection Ontario names unrealistically low bids as a red flag in its own guidance, and the reason is unglamorous. A bid that is half of two other bids is not usually a fraud in the movie sense. It is an incomplete scope.

What tends to be missing: the permit. Disposal and dump fees. Workers compensation coverage. Tear-off, when the plan is quietly to shingle over the existing roof. Fixture and finish allowances set so low that every choice you make becomes an extra. The exterior landscaping restoration after a waterproofing dig, which is the single most common surprise line in that trade.

There is one clean way to test it. Write a one-page scope yourself, with quantities, and ask all three contractors to price that same document. Then ask each of them, in writing, what is excluded. The gap between the cheap quote and the others usually appears in about thirty seconds.

Cash with no receipt means no warranty you can enforce, no proof for an insurance claim, and no paper trail if the work has to be redone. It is also usually a sign of a business that is not registered, not insured, and not carrying workers compensation coverage, which is the exposure that can genuinely cost a homeowner the most.

The related trap is paying the whole thing out. In Ontario, the Construction Act sets a statutory 10 percent holdback on amounts payable to the contractor, with a 60-day lien preservation window. That applies to homeowners doing renovations too. If you pay 100 percent and a subcontractor goes unpaid, you can end up paying for the same work twice.

Quebec works differently. There is no statutory holdback for a private construction contract, so if your contract is silent, no percentage applies automatically. Negotiate 5 to 10 percent into the contract, or you simply do not have it. A subcontractor's legal hypothec has to be published in the land register within 30 days of the end of the work, so ask for statutory declarations that everyone down the chain has been paid before you release the final cheque.

This one has grown quickly because the rebate landscape is genuinely confusing right now, and confusion is the raw material.

Ontario's official Home Renovation Savings Program website carries its own warning about scammers creating fake websites, promoting unauthorized rebate offers, and impersonating participating contractors. The pitch is usually a variation on the same theme: we are government approved, the rebate is guaranteed, sign today because funding is running out.

It is checkable in about two minutes. Participating contractors appear on the official program list. And nearly every meaningful rebate program requires pre-approval before the work begins, so any contractor telling you to install first and apply after is either uninformed or counting on you being uninformed.

Do not assume it is too late, because it usually is not.

In Ontario, a contract signed at your home can be cancelled within 10 days of you receiving the written copy, for any reason, with the refund due within 15 days. If required content was missing, or the business made a false or misleading statement, you have a year. Quebec mirrors the 10 days for itinerant merchants, and also stretches to a year if the cancellation statement and resolution form were not provided with the contract.

Cancel in writing, keep a copy, and send it in a way that proves delivery. Then report it. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre takes reports at 1-888-495-8501, and reporting matters more than it feels like it does. Only an estimated 5 to 10 percent of fraud in Canada gets reported, which is exactly why enforcement moves slowly.