Here’s My Experience with a Roofer and How You Can Avoid Being Scammed Like I Was.
I was recently scammed on a roof repair by a local contractor. This has given me an idea to create a series of articles to protect home owners from being scammed by random contractors.
Scamming is Big Business
These days more people get scammed than ever before on normal everyday home repairs, renovations, additions, roof repairs, etc. A lot of it has to do with how many elderly people we now have in America. They make an ideal target for a shady contractor looking to make as much as he can will delivering as little as possible in return.
As a result, I will be releasing articles related to hiring contractors for various types of home projects as I have a chance to research them.
For now, I’ll share a few things I’ve learned to avoid getting scammed in the future by a roofer.
My Experience
My story goes like this:
I had a leak, contacted a roofer which I found by searching “roofing contractor near me” on Google. Well, I selected one of the sites that was down towards the bottom of the page and the website looked good. Little did I know that this was not a company, but just some guy who had built a website and was doing the work out of his pickup truck.
He showed up, gave me a quote for a simple patch repair and was going to reseal a leak that was coming through one of the pipes coming out of my roof.
He did the initial repair in under 30 minutes and I thought this was the last of it. I paid him, and he left.
Now, a few days later it rained and my roof continued to leak. I’m glad I didn’t repair the drywall damage because by this time it would have been ruined by the fresh water which was seeping through my roof.
So, I called the guy back and he came back out to assess the repair. He then said there was another location near the area he had “repaired” which was still leaking. Additionally, he mentioned that I really needed to replace my roof as there were likely other areas that would be causing trouble soon. He then repaired this other trouble-spot. He charged me double what he had the first time because he said this patch repair was over a larger area and more time and materials were used than he had to on the first leak. Nonetheless, I paid thinking this would surely be the last of it….
Nope.
Next time it rained, I had 4 leaks in my roof. Leaks which were never there before. So now, (I think you can see where this is going) the guy comes back out and tells me I need to replace my roof. He quoted me $10,000 for a new roof and said he could have it completed in under a week. I told him absolutely not and explained I was very unhappy with my experience up to this point.
Nonetheless, I then found a local licensed roofing contractor by searching Yelp! for contractors with the best reviews and came across www.estrellaroofing.com. I told the Estrella roofer (who I think was the owner) what I had been through. They were able to complete a repairs on my roof that proved to stand up during the last storm and one other light rain. The cost was right about what I had paid the scam roofer previously which was $300.
Bottom line, be sure you can trust your contractor to believe what he’s saying and to competently complete the work he promises to do.
So without further ado, here are a few tips when hiring a roofer. Hope this helps some of you.
My Tips to Avoid Getting Scammed by a Roofer
Research
You have to do your due diligence and that requires doing research. There are many ways to research the roof repair marketplace to determine the best one. Information is now more readily available than ever to help you in your quest to gather enough information to help you to make a good choice..
Have Your Roof Inspected By a Professional Roofer
The first consideration is to determine the extent of your roofing problems and if you need roof repairs or if you need a full roof replacement. Getting a professional assessment of your roof’s condition does not mean you blindly take whatever a roofer says as gospel. You need to ask the right questions and understand enough about the answers to be able to make the right determination yourself. Here are some questions you will need to ask any roofer you are interviewing.
Here are some other tips:
- Ask for a contractor’s license and look it up(in Arizona a roofer must have a contractors license actively registered with the Register of Contractors )
- Ask for referrals of other people in your area
- Find out if they are bonded and insured
- Check with the BBB
- Research them on Yelp!
- Always get more than one assessment of your roof’s condition and quote
Also, I came across this while doing some basic research on the topic, turns out contractors or scammers will locate to an area where recent storm damage has caused issues to roofs and prey on the people in those communities:
Hope you have found this article helps you avoid being scammed out of your hard earned money. Stay tuned for my future articles on avoiding shady contractors when it comes to home renovations.