Someone quotes you a great price. The website looks professional. The reviews seem solid. They ask for a deposit — 30%, maybe 50% — before any work begins. You’re about to type in your card number when a small voice says: wait, do I actually know anything about this company?
That voice is worth listening to. Deposit fraud, contractor disappearing acts, and outright scams cost American consumers billions of dollars every year. The Federal Trade Commission received more than 2.6 million fraud reports in a single recent year, and home improvement and business service scams consistently rank among the top categories. The good news: most shady operators leave a trail. You just have to know where to look, and the whole process takes less time than brewing a cup of coffee.
This checklist is built for the readers of this directory — people hiring local businesses in Florida and beyond, whether it’s a contractor in Fort Lauderdale, a settlement firm in Naples, or a supplier anywhere in the state. The steps below are ordered by speed: quickest wins first, deeper digs later.
1. Search the State’s Business Registry — Not Just Google
Google is a marketing channel. The Florida Division of Corporations database — Sunbiz.org — is a legal record. These are very different things. Any legitimate Florida LLC, corporation, or registered partnership is required to file with the state and keep that filing current. Pull up Sunbiz, type in the company name, and check three things: the entity status (it should say “Active,” not “Inactive” or “Dissolved”), the registered agent (a real person or service, not a vacant address), and the date of formation.
A company formed six weeks ago asking for a $4,000 deposit on a kitchen remodel deserves extra scrutiny. That doesn’t mean new businesses are bad — everyone starts somewhere — but it does mean you should compensate with more verification elsewhere. Also watch for name-matching tricks: a company calling itself “Premier Roofing Solutions of Fort Lauderdale” might be registered as something completely different, or not registered at all.
2. Cross-Check the Physical Address
Take whatever address the company gives you — on their website, their quote, their business card — and drop it into Google Maps Street View. You are looking for a real place of business, or at least a plausible one. What you sometimes find instead: a UPS Store mailbox, a vacant lot, a residential house with no signage, or an address that doesn’t exist at all.
A home-based business is not automatically suspicious; plenty of legitimate sole proprietors and small LLCs operate from home. The red flag is the mismatch — a company presenting itself as a large regional operation with a polished website, but whose address resolves to Apartment 4B. Combine this with the Sunbiz check above. If the registered agent address is a mail-forwarding service and the physical address on the quote is a strip mall suite that shows up as a virtual office provider, that’s two yellow lights in a row.
3. Verify Licenses for Regulated Trades
Florida licenses a long list of trades and professions — contractors, electricians, plumbers, roofers, real estate agents, insurance adjusters, and many more. Hiring an unlicensed operator in one of these fields doesn’t just put your deposit at risk; it can void your insurance coverage and leave you legally liable for unpermitted work. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) maintains a free public lookup at myfloridalicense.com where you can search by name or license number in seconds.
Don’t just confirm that a license exists — check its status and expiration date. A license that expired two years ago is not a license. Also confirm the license belongs to the individual or entity actually doing the work, not a qualifier who lent their credentials to an unlicensed company. That practice, known as “license lending,” is illegal in Florida and surprisingly common in high-demand trades like roofing after a major storm season.
4. Read the Negative Reviews — Specifically the One-Star Ones
Most people scan the star rating and move on. That’s backwards. A company with a 4.2-star average and 200 reviews that include 15 one-star reviews mentioning “took deposit and never came back” or “stopped responding after we paid” is telling you something critical that the overall score is burying. Sort by lowest rating on Google, Yelp, or the Better Business Bureau and read for patterns, not outliers.
One angry customer who clearly has an axe to grind is noise. Three separate reviews over two years mentioning the same issue — unreturned deposits, missed start dates, work abandoned mid-project — is signal. Also look at how the company responds to negative reviews. A professional response that acknowledges the issue and offers resolution is a good sign. Responses that attack the reviewer, call them liars, or spiral into all-caps defensiveness are a very bad sign, regardless of who was actually right.
The BBB rating is imperfect (it’s partly based on how a business interacts with the BBB itself, not purely on consumer outcomes), but the complaint history is genuinely useful raw data. A business with 11 unresolved complaints in 36 months is waving a flag you shouldn’t ignore.
5. Ask Directly for Proof of Insurance
Before any money changes hands on a service that involves work on your property — or significant financial risk — ask the company to send you a Certificate of Insurance (COI). A legitimate contractor, service provider, or professional firm will have general liability insurance and, if they have employees, workers’ compensation coverage. They can email you a COI in minutes; it’s a standard document their insurance broker provides.
Two things to verify once you have it: the policy expiration date (ask yourself why they’re showing you a policy that expired last March), and whether your name or address is listed as an additional insured for the project. If a company hesitates, gets evasive, or tells you they don’t “do that,” treat it as a hard stop. Uninsured contractors leave you holding the bag if a worker is injured on your property or if they damage something and vanish. The deposit is the least of your problems at that point.
6. Search “[Company Name] + Scam” and “[Company Name] + Complaint”
This sounds almost too simple, but it works. Add the words “scam,” “complaint,” “lawsuit,” “fraud,” or “rip off” to the company name in a Google search. You’re looking for forum threads, local news stories, court records, or consumer complaint boards that didn’t show up in the regular review ecosystem. Sites like Ripoff Report, Trustpilot, and even Reddit threads surface complaints that companies have sometimes successfully suppressed from Google’s main results through reputation management services.
Also search the owner’s name if you know it. People who run fraudulent businesses often close one entity and open another under a slightly different name, but they can’t easily change their own name. A business owner with a pattern of dissolved LLCs and consumer complaints across multiple company names is a repeat actor, and that pattern is findable.
7. Structure the Deposit Itself to Limit Your Exposure
Even after doing all of the above, you can reduce your financial risk through how you structure the payment. First: never pay a deposit in cash, wire transfer, cryptocurrency, or gift cards. These are effectively unrecoverable if things go wrong. Pay by credit card wherever possible — you have federal chargeback rights under the Fair Credit Billing Act that give you real leverage if the company fails to deliver.
Second: negotiate the deposit amount. Industry standard for most home improvement contracts is 10–30% upfront, not 50% and certainly not 100%. A company demanding full payment before starting work — especially in a trade where payment milestones tied to project stages are the norm — is either cash-desperate or planning to disappear. If they insist on a large upfront payment, ask why, and get the answer in writing. Finally, get everything in writing before you pay anything: scope of work, start date, completion date, what happens if they miss it, and refund terms if the project is cancelled. A verbal agreement with a deposit is almost impossible to enforce.
8. Trust the Friction
Here’s the most underrated piece of advice on this list: if a company is making you feel rushed, guilty, or foolish for asking basic questions, that pressure is itself information. Legitimate businesses expect due diligence. They’ve been asked for their license number before. They have their COI on file. They’re happy to give you references. They don’t create artificial deadlines to force a decision before you’ve had time to think.
High-pressure tactics — “this price is only good today,” “we have another client who wants this slot,” “I can’t believe you don’t trust us” — are sales manipulation techniques. They work because they exploit social discomfort. The antidote is simple: slow down deliberately. Tell them you need 24 hours. See how they react. A professional will say “of course, take your time.” A scammer will escalate. That reaction alone is worth more than any review.
Five minutes of verification before handing over a deposit is the cheapest insurance you’ll ever buy. Use the state registry, check the license, read the bad reviews, ask for the COI, pay by card, and pay attention to how the company treats you when you ask reasonable questions. None of this is complicated — it just requires the discipline to do it before the excitement of a new project or the pressure of a sales pitch makes you skip it. The businesses worth hiring will pass every one of these checks without breaking a sweat.
