What the ROC number on a bid actually tells you

This page is not about us. It is the one page on this site you should read with every bid in front of you, including ours.

When a licence is legally required

The Arizona Registrar of Contractors states the threshold plainly: "If the entire cost of the project, including labor and materials is over $1,000 or requires a permit by the local municipality, Arizona law requires the person or business performing the work to be licensed."

Read the second half of that sentence, because it is the half people miss. It is an "or", not an "and". A job under $1,000 that needs a permit still requires a licensed contractor. Essentially every window, door or roofing job in this valley clears one of those two bars, usually both.

What you actually get for it

Here is the ROC's own summary, and it is unusually direct for a government page: "Residential property owners using a licensed contractor have significant protections not available to persons hiring unlicensed entities."

Those protections are specific and worth knowing by name.

1. A bond, sized to the contractor

Every licensee must "file a Contractor's Bond in the amount required for the respective license classification and anticipated annual gross volume." The amounts are published:

Source: Arizona Registrar of Contractors, bond information.

Be realistic about what that is. A $7,500 bond does not cover a $30,000 job going wrong. It is a first line, not a safety net, and it is the step you have to exhaust before the bigger protection opens up.

2. The Residential Contractors' Recovery Fund

This is the real one, and it is the reason the licence check pays for itself.

Payment from the fund is limited to $30,000 per claimant per residence, and Arizona statute caps what any one contractor's licence can cost the fund in total: "The liability of the fund shall not exceed two hundred thousand dollars for any one residential contractor's license." (A.R.S. §32-1139.)

To be eligible, per the ROC's own claim form, you must:

• own the property, and "occupy or intend to occupy the property as your primary residence"
• have contracted with a licensed residential or dual licensed contractor — the licence must have been active on the contract signing date, the first payment date, or the date work commenced
• first file a claim against the contractor's bond
• not be the spouse of the contractor or the spouse's representative
• have either won a disciplinary outcome on an administrative complaint, or obtained a court order for payment from the fund

That last condition is the one nobody expects, so we will say it plainly. Filing a complaint does not hand you money. The complaint establishes the wrongdoing; the fund is a separate claim you make afterwards, within "two years after final judgment on your administrative complaint."

3. A two-year window to complain — and it starts earlier than you think

The deadlines are published and they are not generous:

New construction: "complaints against licensed contractors must be filed within two years from the close of escrow or actual occupancy, whichever occurred first." Remodel or repairs: "complaints against licensed contractors must be filed within two years from the date work was last performed." Source: Arizona Registrar of Contractors, file a complaint.

Two years from the last day anyone was on site. Not from the day you noticed the problem. A roof underlayment failure or a window seal failure can easily take longer than that to show itself, which is exactly why the warranty on your job matters separately from the licence — and why you want both in writing.

The trap: hiring unlicensed does not just lose you the fund

This is the part worth reading twice.

The ROC's own FAQ contains a line that sounds procedural and is not: "Proof of cost to complete or repair cannot be based on bids supplied by, or work performed by, an unlicensed person or business."

So an unlicensed contractor is not a discount with slightly more risk. It is a job with no bond, no recovery fund, no complaint process, and a quote that the state will not even accept as evidence of what the repair costs. If it goes wrong, you are in civil court on your own, against someone who may have no assets and no insurance.

Cash-price offers from unlicensed people are common in this valley, they are often genuinely cheaper, and this is what you are trading away for it.

How to check, in thirty seconds

1. Go to the Arizona Registrar of Contractors and use the licence search.
2. Enter the licence number from the bid — not the company name. Names get reused; numbers do not.
3. Check five things:

• Status is Active. Not expired, not suspended, not "inactive".
• The name on the licence matches the name on your contract, exactly. A licence held by a different entity than the one you are signing with protects you from nothing.
• The classification covers your work. See the table below.
• It is a residential or dual licence, because the Recovery Fund only reaches residential work.
• The complaint history.

Do this for all three of your bids. It takes ninety seconds total and it is the cheapest due diligence available to you anywhere in this process.

The classifications that matter for this kind of work

Source: Arizona Registrar of Contractors, license classifications.

Note the dollar ceilings on R-61 and R-62. A contractor holding only an R-62 cannot lawfully take a $20,000 job. If the classification on the licence has a ceiling below your project, that is a problem before anyone picks up a tool — and it is visible on the free lookup.

What a licence does not tell you

We are going to be honest about the limits, because a page that oversells this would be doing the same thing it is warning you about.

A licence is a floor, not a recommendation. It tells you the contractor met the state's requirements and posted a bond. It does not tell you the crew is good, the measurements will be right, or the job will be finished on time.

It does not mean the people on your property are employees. Licensed contractors subcontract, and a day-rate crew costs less because the risk moves off the contractor's books. It moves somewhere. Ask who is physically doing the work and whose payroll they are on — that is a separate question from the licence and it is the one that decides your install quality.

It does not cover your labor warranty. A manufacturer's warranty pays for a part; somebody still has to come and fit it. That is the installer's own workmanship warranty, a separate document with a separate term. Ask for both.

And the bond is small. We said it above and it bears repeating: a $4,250 to $15,000 bond does not make a large job whole.

Put it in your process

Four questions, of everyone, ours included:

1. What is your ROC number, and what classification is it? Then look it up yourself rather than taking the answer.
2. Is the entity on the licence the same entity on my contract?
3. Are your installers employees or subcontractors?
4. Give me the product warranty and the labor warranty as two separate documents.

Ours is ROC 364596, our installers are Renmark employees, and we would rather you checked us than took our word for it. A contractor who is annoyed by these questions has told you something useful for free.

And get three bids — then compare them on the line items rather than the bottom number, because that is where the real difference lives.

Related guides

• What a window quote should include
• When to replace your windows
• Window replacement cost in Arizona