By Randy Hutchinson
President of the BBB
Reprinted from The Jackson Sun
Roofers are the number one type of business that consumers check out with the BBB. Nationwide, they pull a report on a roofer more than 17,000 times a day. Our BBB received 6,200 requests for reports on local roofers in May of this year, a 67 percent increase over last year. Requests for reports on all kinds of companies jumped 29 percent as the pandemic makes consumers even more cautious about where they spend their money.
Hopefully every consumer who learned a roofer had a bad record with the BBB moved on to a reputable one, but not every consumer does his or her homework. Two consumers filed complaints about the same roofer in May, one saying he didn’t complete the job and one saying he never started it. Both paid money in advance, in one case the entire proceeds from her insurance company.
We revoked the roofer’s BBB Accreditation in 2017 for not delivering on his promises to his customers; he’s had an F rating ever since. These consumers, and others who have filed complaints since 2017, could have saved themselves a lot of money and grief if they’d only checked him out with the BBB. And don’t assume that no news is good news. Another consumer filed a complaint on a roofer we had no record of until we got the complaint, which is unusual. He never responded to it, even after we called to be sure he got it and to explain how not responding would negatively impact his rating.
If you don’t have a particular roofer in mind, we can provide you with a list of BBB Accredited roofers who can do the job. When they apply for accreditation, we verify they have any required licenses and re-verify it when they renew their accreditation annually.
We offer this advice for hiring any kind of contractor:
- Consider getting two or three bids, particularly for big jobs. Don’t automatically choose the lowest price. Be sure you’re comparing apples to apples – one contractor’s bid may be higher because his materials are a better quality.
- Find out if the contractor is a member of a professional association that has standards or a code of ethics.
- Verify that the contractor has workmen’s compensation, property damage, and personal liability insurance; and is properly bonded.
Get everything in writing. The contract should specify start and completion dates and describe warranties and guarantees of workmanship. Don’t accept vague descriptions of the work to be done such as “replace the roof.” That leaves a lot of room for later disagreements about quality of materials, colors, responsibility for clean-up and so forth.
It’s not uncommon for a contractor to ask for a deposit or an advance to buy materials, but never pay the entire amount upfront. We see too many complaints where customers lost all leverage with contractors because they paid in full before the job was even started and had to pay someone else to finish it. Try not to pay more than a third up front and schedule remaining payments when agreed upon milestones in the job are completed.
And when you have a good experience with a roofer or any other kind of business, please come to our website and file a positive review about the company.