I'm a grouchy older woman with legitimate trust issues. I don't like people in general, I really don't like people coming over to my house and when it comes to hiring help, my suspicions about their inadequacies ring through the roof. No pun intended!
Imagine my anxiety level when my roof needed work done. I could either watch my leak cause rot, or I could look for a contractor that would screw me over and cause more rot in a wide variety of ways that the original leak didn't even address. Hmmmm. Seemed to be damned if I did and damned if I didn't. So I put it off for a year as the water running down my bedroom wall increased.
Eventually I had to go out on that limb to call for help with a roof repair. When I mentioned I'm a grouchy old woman with trust issues, I should have also mentioned I'm an old miser who squeezes every nickel until the buffalo screams. (You younger folks can google that analogy.) It put me in a really bad mood. Not only did I have to invite people over to my house and try to be polite as I side stepped their attempts to swindle me with bogus bids to fix it, I had to spend money to get it done. Ya - there's not enough alcohol.
The crux to my situation was I'd already asked my insurance company to send a person to inspect my roof after a major hail storm. Said inspector cheerfully told me there were no damages. I actually thanked the lying POS, not knowing he was lying to me!
OK so fast forward. I looked up roofing people and made appointments and dealt with the discomfort and anger of a few of them actually trying to rip me off, so I was already in a pretty bad mood when Conrad's Roofing sent a guy out. Here we go again, right?
Wait. What?
There really is hail damage? Insurance really will cover the payment for this damage? My insurance inspector lied? Four other people on my roof didn't notice this and were willing to charge me cash to fix a roof that my home-owners policy should rightfully cover? What the actual heck????
Ah! See? See? Really? Was I actually wrong to be distrustful of contractor inadequacies and rip-off artists? Guys who own a hammer and call themselves experts? Nope, I wasn't.
Conrad's guy John came off the roof showing me photos of the hail damage. He suggested we call my insurance company, so I went inside, came out with their phone number and stood there in a really, really bad mood as we called. John sent in the photos, a week later I had a payment, and a few days after that he had a crew crawling over my house like a colony of ants. It was amazing.
When they got through all the old shingles and found damages to my decking, they called my insurance company and got payment to replace my damaged decking too. I didn't have to do a thing. In fact, the insurance carrier called me and said they were paying more, total surprise! Sure, great! Fix it!
For the price it would have taken out of pocket to fix the initial leak, I just paid my deductible and got an entire new roof on the whole house. Four out of five contractors didn't even suggest that. They were just going to leave an ugly patch on my house and call it good as they laughed their way to the bank and left me with a severely hail damaged roof.
So the new roof went up on a Friday. The next Monday good ol' Oklahoma weather, and/or God with His supreme sense of humor, dropped another round of 2 inch jagged hail on my new roof. I wasn't worried - I mean between home owners and Conrad's warranty I was covered but still what a major pain in the behind. So I called John, texted him a photo of the hail, he was on my roof the next day and just to be sure, I climbed the ladder with him to make sure I wasn't being lied to again. The roof looked perfect except a few dents on the vent covers. The shingles looks fantastic. The point is, he was here the next morning to check it out and make it right if necessary.
My roof isn't one of those you see on the TV commercials. It's not huge or grand with massive peaks and valleys. But it's my roof. It's where I put my children to sleep beneath it. It's where the dogs and cat go to escape the thunder and the lightening. It's our home. Conrad's Roofing didn't treat me "less" just because my home isn't a show stopper, they treated my home as if it were the only home I have. Which it is. No snobbery. I can't say enough about that. read more
