Roofing contractor won't honour written guarantee
3/28/2016 at 1:01:30 PM
I had my roof replaced in the summer and the contractor gave me a written guarantee that he would come back at no cost if anything should happen. Well now I have a leak in my ceiling and I have been trying to get the contractor to honor the agreement but it's been 3 weeks now and I just get excuse after excuse that he's busy. With all this rain coming I'm worried it's going to get a lot worse. I'm not sure what I can do. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I can't afford to hire another contractor at the moment. This roof already cost me a lot and it's only been a few months since it was replaced.
3/28/2016 at 3:06:10 PM
Is he a registered roofing contractor with insurance?
3/28/2016 at 3:29:56 PM
Yes he is.
3/28/2016 at 3:50:10 PM
Hi Anna,
He may be a legitimately good contractor who is busy because he IS good. Give him a chance to show his true colours. Send him a letter asking him to fix the problem. Give him a reasonable time line, say seven days. Say in the letter, if he fails to honor his guarantee, you will be forced to hire a third party to complete the work. In this case, you will peruse him for any money's charged by the third party. I'm sure this will get a result.
Good luck with your project.
3/28/2016 at 3:51:46 PM
I would get the roof inspected by another contractor if I was you. It should last longer than that.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can claim on his insurance for any damage caused by his efforts at roofing. Contact your property insurance agent to confirm.
3/28/2016 at 4:00:10 PM
Sorry to hear you are having trouble, was he or she a member of any association that could get involed to mediate the problem- BBB, ect. I would start there. Let your home insurance company know that you hired the contractor, your roof is leaking to see if his liability insurance will get involved with your insurance to make things right.
Hope this helps.
3/29/2016 at 10:36:49 PM
Hi Anna,
Sorry to hear about your predicament. One option you could use is to send something in writing such as an email, or even drop by the company's office in person with a letter to formally tell them that they are not responding or coming out to fix the problem that you've been calling about. Give a reasonable amount of time for them to still fix the problem. For example, you could say in your letter / email something to the effect of: "please have someone fix and address the issue by 4pm Friday. Failure to do so by that time will result in us hiring another contractor to do the repair and seek costs from your company"
This way you will have given them a final warning and then you may unfortunately may have to hire another contractor to fix the problem and take your former company to court to get compensated.
Best of luck.
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