What “verified” actually means here
It means one specific thing, and it is the same thing on every listing: the business's state contractor registration — Washington L&I, or Idaho's for Coeur d'Alene-area crews — has been checked against the state's own record, and the profile carries what came back: the number, the status, the date it was verified, and a link to the record.
A license is the first filter, and it's checkable
A contractor registration means the state has this business on record to do contracting work there — Washington L&I on the Spokane side, Idaho DOPL on the Coeur d'Alene side — and the line between them matters: a crew needs the registration of the state the job is in. It's the one credential you can confirm yourself in about a minute, from a source neither of us controls — which is why every listing here starts with it, dated and linked.
What a bond or insurance badge means
Washington requires a contractor bond and liability insurance to hold a registration, and publishes both; Idaho requires liability insurance to register. When the state record confirms them, the listing shows them. Before work starts, ask for current certificates sent to you straight from the insurer and the bonding company — those are the documents that count on the day, and a good contractor hands them over without being chased.
Check the date, then check it again before you sign
Registrations move — they lapse, they renew, they get suspended. That's why every profile prints the date its license was verified and links straight to the state record. Pull that record before you sign anything: it takes a minute, and it's the single most useful minute you'll spend on the whole project.
- 01Pull the state record — WA L&I at secure.lni.wa.gov, or Idaho's lookup at edopl.idaho.gov. Both are free and public, and every listing here links straight to its own.
- 02Confirm the bond and liability insurance on that record, and ask for current certificates sent by their insurer.
- 03Match the business name and registration number on your written bid to the ones on the state record.
- 04Get several written, itemized bids and ask who actually does the work.
The rating sits next to the license
Where a listing carries a Google rating, you get the score, the review count, marked as Google's, and a link to the Maps listing so you can read the reviews yourself. It appears only if it has been checked in the last 30 days — a stale star count is worse than none.
The license and the rating answer different questions, which is exactly why both are on the card. The license is the fact: checked against the state record, dated, linked. The rating is what people said afterwards. Read the first to know the business is legitimate; read the reviews to know what they're like to have in your house. Two minutes, both worth it.
We're widening this. Ratings from the other places local contractors get reviewed are next, and after that reviews collected here — from homeowners, on real projects that came through this desk. They'll carry the same attribution and dates as everything else on the site.
Who pays, and what it buys
Asking costs nothing, ever. Contractors pay per project: a flat rate for each project we hand them, published on the site, charged to a card on file only when a project actually reaches them, and refunded in cash when a lead is wrong. Claiming a listing costs nothing, and the first three businesses in each trade to put a card on file get their first three projects free and 20% off every project after.
That is the whole model, so here is the ordering rule in one line. Trade listings are ordered by the evidence we hold — businesses with a current, well-evidenced Google rating first, then the longest-registered. Paying per project buys the introduction; position on the page is earned by evidence alone. What a contractor pays for is the project we send them. The license check underneath is identical on every listing, paying or not, and the state record says what the state record says.