Fly By Night Roofers Should Be Avoided—Here’s How to Spot One!
When it comes to repairing or replacing your roof, it’s always best to look for a professional roofing company based in or near Georgetown, TX for the job. Local roofers provide unique benefits and advantages to their customers. However, “shopping local” in roofing also reduces your chance of hiring a fly by night roofer—one who will promise low prices, do poor roofing work, and then disappear before you realize you’ve been scammed.
While hiring a local roofing company for the job is best, sometimes high-pressure sales tactics get homeowners to act against their better judgment. If you have a roofer knocking on your door after a storm, here are a few warning signs to watch out for.
1. They’re Immediately Available
If a major storm just passed through, chances are you’ll be urgently looking for a professional roofing company near Georgetown, TX. After all, it’s best to repair damage quickly to avoid leaving your roof vulnerable.
Even so, while storm damage roofers need to respond quickly, they likely won’t show up on your doorstep ready to replace your roof right now. Instead, this is a tactic used by fly by night roofers to increase the urgency of the situation and get you to sign off on their work without thinking.
2. They Don’t Have Any References
Local roofing companies rely on building a strong reputation in their community. Fly by night roofers, on the other hand, travel around the country looking for vulnerable homeowners—and if you could speak to any of their past clients, they probably wouldn’t recommend the roofer’s work.
If a roofer can’t provide any references or point you to any online reviews of their work, they probably aren’t one you should be hiring.
3. Their Quote Will Be Surprisingly Low
Roofing projects can get expensive, particularly if you need to replace your entire roof. Unfortunately, there’s just no way around this fact, between the material costs and the skilled labors of the roofers completing the work.
Fly by night roofers will try to take advantage of this by quoting you a price nowhere near what any professional roofing company in Georgetown, TX would offer. The real cost, though, will be in the low quality of their work.
4. They’ll Demand Upfront Payment (in Cash)
Fly by night roofers are rarely running just a single scam. In addition to pressuring homeowners into letting them replace their roof, they’re also likely to dodge taxes. Requiring you to pay in cash is a simple way for them to avoid leaving any kind of paper trail. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that it makes them harder to track down later, too.
5. They Won’t Have Any Credentials
Most roofing contractors will carry credentials of some kind, such as a roofing license or insurance. Credentials help to establish the quality of their work. In addition, insurance protects you as the homeowner from liability in the event of an injury or damage done to your property during roofing work.
However, since these credentials require both money and quality roofing work to obtain, fly by night roofers typically won’t have any to speak of.
6. They Won’t Provide You With Basic Business Information
Any reputable business should at minimum have an address and telephone number, preferably a landline. Additional business data such as social media accounts, an email address, a Better Business Bureau entry, or a website are even better, as this helps to establish them as a real entity.
For fly by night roofers, all of these pieces of information are just another way for angry customers to come to collect after the low quality of their work is revealed. If your roofer can’t provide some of the most basic pieces of information about their business, they’re likely hiding something—or getting ready to disappear.
Action Roofing: Professional Roofing Company Near Georgetown, TX
Here at Action Roofing & Construction, we’re always looking out for our customers. Whether that’s responding quickly to storm damage, helping homeowners navigate the insurance claims process, or protecting customers from unethical roofers, we take our role as a local roofing company very seriously. In all our years as professional roofers, we’ve never seen anything good come out of hiring fly by night roofers. Look for these signs and avoid any roofer that seems untrustworthy!
And next time your home is impacted by storm damage, call the professionals at Action Roofing.
