This company wasn’t licensed to work on Tri-Cities homes, but it did anyway
An Oregon company is in trouble for a third time after sending unlicensed workers to replace air conditioning and heating systems across southern Washington.
Heating and air conditioning company Temp-A-Cure worked on 22 homes between February and August, including six in Pasco, Kennewick and Walla Walla.
The problem is the company doesn’t have a valid electrical contractor license, according to the Washington state Department of Labor and Industries.
And in the Tri-Cities, the work was done by unlicensed electrical installers, according to Labor and Industries records.
The state agency levied $63,600 in fines against the company, as well as fining three employees a total of $5,000 for working without a license.
Homeowners risk having shoddy work when they use someone without a license, said Matthew Erlich, a spokesman for the department.
“Our goal is to make workers and the public safe,” he said. “In this case, electrical work done by unlicensed contractors can cause a significant hazard. That makes this sort of thing an important safety issue for the public.”
And Erlich said it’s unfair to businesses that follow the rules when they’re competing with people who don’t.
Neither the company nor the employees have appealed the violations by a December deadline. They now have until next month to pay or potentially see the fines get sent to a collection agency.
This is the third time the company has gotten in trouble with the department for similar behavior in 2019 and in 2016, said the state.
Underbid competitors
The state began investigating after a contractor complained that Temp-A-Cure undercut their price for a Walla Walla project.
When the inspector showed up, he found that the employee didn’t have a license to perform electrical work.
It turned out people doing the work for Temp-A-Cure had used wires that were too small for the amount of electricity they would have carried, according to another contractor who finished the project.
When the investigator went to Temp-A-Cure, they found a list of homes where the contractor performed work using people who weren’t licensed for electrical work, according to the L&I investigation.
“This is an example of an out-of-state company unlicensed for electrical work hiring unqualified people for non-permitted projects,” said Steve Thornton, the L&I chief electrical inspector.
“The result takes work from honest businesses and contractors licensed in Washington, and creates a danger to public safety,” he said.
People can learn if a contractor is licensed to operate in the state, has an up-to-date worker’s compensation account or has safety violations pending by going to the department’s page at www.lni.wa.gov and using the verify tool.