Nia Daskalopoulos and Claude Bedard spent years building and nurturing their renovation company's reputation until, all of a sudden, they thought all that work would come crashing down.
And the worst part was that it wasn't even their fault.
Daskalopoulos and Bedard are the owners of Damasco Renovations Inc., and their company's reputation is the foundation upon which it is built.
"Ninety-five per cent of our referrals are word of mouth and repeat clients," Daskalopoulos said.
The company's paperwork is in order, Daskalopoulos says, and they've never had any problems until recently.
They received a call from the Commission de la Construction du Québec (CCQ), the government body that oversees the industry.
The news was, to say the least, alarming.
"The concern was that there was work done and not only was the contract incomplete, but that there was a question about our licensing and our permits, about who we were and how we did the job," Daskalopoulos said.
Daskalopoulos and Bedard checked it out with the CCQ and they claim they never signed that contract. For starters, they say they were on a plane the date it was signed, and they have the plane ticket to prove it. Secondly, the name of the company on the contract is misspelled but the permit number is the same. And finally, the signature doesn't match that of the owners.
"Panic, initial panic," Daskalopoulos said. "You hear so much about identity fraud, never, never did it ever cross my mind in terms of the company that I would have to worry about something like that."
But it happened, and it's left Daskalopoulos and Bedard feeling a bit helpless.
"At this point we just sort of feel like we're in limbo and just doing what we can to protect the company," Daskalopoulos said.
In trying to figure out how this could have happened, Daskalopoulos and Bedard began by caling the Régie du batiment (RBQ), the government body that issues permits.
Daskalopoulos thinks whoever did this to her company got the information via the RBQ website.
"I would suspect at this point that somebody simply picked us as a random company and used our name and contract number and was working under our company's name," she said.
Daskalopoulos says the website is a good tool that allows consumers to know which companies are licensed and what kind of work they do, she feels some additional security measures should be put in place like a sign-in system that would allow IP addresses to be tracked.
The RBQ would not comment on the Damasco Renovations Inc. case specifically, but says it is not unique, though company identity theft is rare.
The RBQ says it has no plans to revisit the website because its main purpose is to protect the public, not the companies listed.
They do suggest that consumers call them to double check if the company has had any complaints lodged.
As for Daskalopoulos, she just wonders if there's anything she can do to avoid this from happening again.
