Do your due diligence as with any company, but there are a group of paving / asphalt companies that are notorious for their tactics. In general, you should get several quotes any time you have a job. You will be amazed at how much the prices vary.
You also want to see locations where they have done work. You might want to see places that they did a year ago to see how they are holding up as opposed to ones that they just finished. It is good to talk to some of their customers as well.
Residential
If you have a house and there is a hole in the driveway, you really need more of a handyman. The real paving guys have too much tied up in their equipment to bring it out for a tiny hole. Just get some patch filler and put that in and tamp it down. They are going to want to redo the whole driveway. That is the sort of job they are set up for.
Fly By Nights
But if you have a commercial space with a parking lot, you will get guys coming by saying they are doing work nearby and have some asphalt left over and they can do some patching for you at a great price.
First, you have to wonder if they skimped on the other job so they had enough to make the offer to you and other local property owners. Second, these guys usually do not do a very good job and their prices aren’t the bargain that they claim.
To get some referrals, you might call some commercial property management companies. They deal with paving companies on a regular basis and can refer some good ones to you most likely.
Good Guy Gone Bad
You can still get stuck. I had used one guy and he had done a good job. A few years later I needed some holes patched. I got several quotes and he came in a bit below the others. He said that he was going to put 2 inches of asphalt down. I don’t know if he had started drinking or was having other problems, but it turned out he only put down about a half inch in some of the places and when it started to break up, he was no where to be found to fix the botched job he had done.
One thing that worried me while he was doing it was that he rented the equipment to do the job. He didn’t own his own equipment. From now on, I would only use someone who was successful enough that they had their equipment.
