What the Standards-Pledged Badge Means for You (For Customers)

You found this page because you saw a contractor's listing on the Authority Network America network — on a state, county, or town authority site — with the ANA Standards-Pledged badge on it. This page explains what that badge actually means before you hire.

In one sentence

The contractor signed a written pledge to follow the published Standards of Business and accepts removal from the directory as the consequence if they fail to follow the pledge.

That is the whole thing. Read on for what that means in practice — and, just as important, what it does not mean.

What the badge means

It means the contractor has done four things voluntarily:

1. Read the Pledge. The full pledge text is at /the-pledge. It covers contracts, permits, licensing honesty, change orders, deposits, workmanship, conduct on your property, subcontractors, dispute resolution, and recordkeeping. Twelve specific commitments, in plain English. The contractor read all twelve.
2. Signed the Pledge. They signed it on a specific date, with their name and business name. The signed record is on file, and the signing date appears on their individual provider page.
3. Has a public profile on the registry. Their listing carries their signing date, business identity, and current pledge status. If they violate the pledge or withdraw from the program, the registry reflects that the same day.
4. Accepted removal as the consequence. They agreed in writing that if they violate the Pledge, ANA may remove them from the directory and post their name on the revoked-pledges page with the date and reason.

What the badge does not mean

It does not mean ANA verified their license. ANA does not pull state licensing records, does not check insurance certificates, does not run background checks, does not validate references. We are not equipped to do those checks at the depth and currency they would require to be honest about them, and we are not pretending to. The contractor's licensure status is what they claim it to be — verifying it, if you want it verified, is your job and your state licensing board's job.

It does not guarantee the work will be perfect, or even acceptable. The Pledge is a commitment to a standard of conduct. Contractors can fall short of any commitment they make. The badge is not insurance against that.

It is not a substitute for ordinary due diligence. Before hiring any contractor, including a Standards-Pledged one, you should still:

• Verify their license is current with your state's licensing board (most states publish a free public lookup).
• Ask for and verify proof of liability insurance and worker's compensation coverage.
• Check references from at least three recent jobs of similar scope.
• Get the contract in writing — every term, every dollar, every date — before paying any deposit.
• Confirm that any required permits will be pulled by the contractor in the customer's name where law requires.

The Pledge does not replace any of that. It commits the contractor to do their part of it honestly.

Why the badge is meaningful even without verification

Three reasons:

The contractor chose this listing. Nobody made them sign a pledge. They sought out a directory whose entire premise is we publish the standards we expect, you commit in writing to follow them, and we publish your name when you do not. Self-selection alone tells you something.

The directory sits next to the actual laws. When you found this contractor on the ANA network, you found them on a page that also hosts the building codes, statutes, and licensing rules of their jurisdiction. There is no plausible deniability about what the rules are — the rules are right there on the same page. The contractor sees this every time their listing appears.

Removal is public and durable. When a contractor's pledge is revoked, their name stays on the revoked-pledges page permanently. A customer who searches that contractor's name a year later, three years later, will find the revocation. That is a real cost the contractor is exposing themselves to by taking the pledge in the first place. Most contractors who take a pledge of this kind will keep it for the same reason most people keep their other written commitments: the public record of breaking them is harder to live with than the work of keeping them.

How to use the badge in your hiring decision

The badge is one input. Treat it like one input.

If you have two qualified contractors and one of them is Standards-Pledged and one is not, the Pledge is a real differentiator. The contractor who took it has put their name on a public commitment. The contractor who did not has not.

If you have a contractor who is Standards-Pledged but whose license check, insurance proof, references, or contract terms do not pan out, do not hire them. The Pledge does not override any of those red flags. It is a commitment to do the work honestly; it is not evidence that they will.

If you have a contractor who is not Standards-Pledged but who passes every other check with flying colors, hiring them is fine. The badge identifies a population of contractors who chose the public commitment; it does not condemn the larger population who did not.

What to do if a Standards-Pledged contractor fails the Pledge

If a Standards-Pledged contractor fails to honor the Pledge in your job — they fail to obtain a permit, they perform shoddy work and refuse to remedy it, they pad change orders, they collect a deposit and disappear, they treat you or your property poorly — you have several recourses, and the order in which to use them matters.

First, raise the concern with the contractor directly, in writing if possible. Most disputes resolve at this step. If they do not, follow the published dispute-resolution procedure — it costs less and resolves faster than litigation.

If direct conversation and the dispute-resolution procedure do not resolve the issue, file a complaint with ANA at /complaints. We review the complaint, give the contractor a 14-day window to respond, and issue a determination within 30 days. If we substantiate the complaint, we revoke the pledge and the contractor's name appears on the revoked-pledges page.

For damages, refunds, license actions, or criminal matters, ANA is the wrong venue. Those remedies live with state licensing boards (which can suspend or revoke a contractor's license), with civil court (which can award damages and enforce contracts), and with the contractor's surety bond (which can pay out to harmed customers). The generic complaint-process page describes those channels by jurisdiction.

We are deliberately a narrow remedy. We do one thing — keep or remove a contractor from a public directory based on whether they honored a public commitment — and we do it in 30 days. That narrow remedy is meaningful exactly because it is narrow and predictable.

A word about the cost

The directory is free to read. The laws and codes adjacent to the directory are free to read. The complaints process is free to use. ANA receives no compensation when a contractor is hired. The program is funded by the contractors who choose to participate — details on the contractor side.

This is intentional. We do not want a financial incentive on either side of the customer-contractor decision.

The law belongs to the people. Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 590 U.S. (2020)