"P.Thorsted" writes:

One thing you can always do, is ask the local guy for references. If he
will not give you any, run not walk away from him. The ones that do give
you references, call the people for an appointment and go see the quality
of the work they received and ask them about how happy they were using
that supplier.

Always good to have references, but who the heck would ever give out bad
references? A guy could do 20 bad jobs and 100 bad ones and give out 10
references from the good jobs.

I suppose references are good if you actually want to see someone's work
other than the showroom.

Brian Elfert