What to Do If a Contractor Takes Your Deposit and Disappears

Short answer: document everything today, send a written demand with a firm deadline, then escalate up a ladder — payment dispute, licensing body, small claims, and a police report only if the facts suggest fraud. Speed matters more than volume. Evidence gets deleted, companies get dissolved, and in most countries the clock on your claim starts running from the moment the work should have been done.

Do these things first, today

1. Stop paying. No further instalments, no "one more payment to get him back on site." That is the single most common way this situation doubles in size.
2. Screenshot everything before it disappears. The listing you hired from, the reviews, the company page, the social profiles, the whole message thread. Contractors delete accounts. Print online records to PDF so your evidence does not depend on their account continuing to exist.
3. Write the timeline while you still remember it. Dates of contact, amounts, promises, the exact wording of the last message. You will need it repeatedly, and memory degrades faster than you expect.
4. Photograph the site, including what was not done and any materials delivered or removed.
5. Check whether they still exist. Company register, licence register, trade association. Whether the business is active, dissolved, or never existed at all changes everything that follows.

Build the file

If you paid cash with no written contract you are not out of options, but your case now rests on messages and witnesses — so collect those harder.

Send a formal written demand

This is the step people skip, and almost every later route will ask whether you did it. Send it by a method that produces proof of delivery — registered post, and email as well. Keep it factual and unemotional. It must contain:

• The parties, the date of the agreement, and what was agreed.
• The amount paid, with dates.
• What has not been delivered.
• A specific demand: complete the work by a named date, or refund the deposit by a named date.
• A deadline. Seven to fourteen days is generally considered reasonable.
• A statement that you will pursue formal remedies if the deadline passes.

Do not threaten anything you are not prepared to do, and do not offer to drop it in exchange for a bit more work — that resets the clock and muddies the record. Note also that silence is not agreement in law: their failure to reply consents to nothing, but it is useful proof that you tried.

The escalation ladder

Fraud, or just a civil dispute?

Police in most places treat an abandoned job as a civil matter and decline to act. What moves it toward criminal fraud is evidence of intent never to perform: a fake identity or licence, forged documents, a company that never existed, or a pattern of identical conduct against many people. If you find other victims — and searching the name alongside your town often turns them up — a joint report is taken far more seriously than five separate ones.

Frequent questions

Is it worth suing a company with no money? Often not for cash recovery, but a judgment still has teeth: it can block licences, show up in credit checks, and last for years. Decide with a clear head rather than in anger.

They keep promising to come back — should I wait? Set one written deadline and treat its expiry as final. Rolling promises are precisely the mechanism by which claim deadlines quietly run out.

Can I leave a review? Yes, if it is factual and verifiable: what you paid, what was delivered, on what dates. Stick to facts rather than characterisation, and keep your evidence.

How much deposit is reasonable next time? As a rule of thumb, no more than a third up front, with further payments tied to completed stages rather than to the calendar. Never pay the final instalment before the final inspection.

What if the agreement was only verbal? Verbal contracts are usually valid but much harder to prove. Your messages, transfers and witnesses become the contract.

Prevention here is unglamorous and genuinely works: verify the contractor or company before you hire, check the contract before signing it — bearing in mind that a signature is a binding agreement — and keep receipts and warranties organised in one place so that the evidence file builds itself before you ever need it.