Anyone with a home with a roof on it who lives in or near Nebraska knows the drill. As soon as…read moresome hail falls, roofers are calling you, mailing stuff to you or sometimes seemingly camping on your doorstep because your misfortune could be their ticket to financial gain. If you let them do so, they will inspect your roof (sometimes it seems for no more than ten seconds and sometimes it seems without even getting out of their trucks) and, they regret (that part's a lie, but not the only one) to tell you that you need a new roof. In fact, the next time it drizzles, they will say, you'll be lucky if anything in your home will manage to stay above water.
Oh, no! So, you call your homeowner's insurance carrier and they are right on it, sending a claims adjustor your way, sometimes even before two of your birthdays have passed since you called. And when they show up? "There's nothing wrong with your roof," says the adjustor. "Nothing at all."
'How can that be?" you wonder. The roofer says that the insurance companies lie to avoid paying on the claims. The insurance carrier says that roofers lie, hoping to bluff the carrier into paying for a new roof that you do not need. What should you do? Who can you trust? What do you know about roofs? How can you determine who is lying to you?
In most situations, you would probably be foolish to trust either one, because each might be right about the other. Not wanting to risk continuing to live under a damaged roof, you call the roofer and tell him or her that you want to take him or her up on the offer to go to bat for you with the insurance company. More often than not, the roofer who had insisted that any idiot can see that you need a new roof has suddenly decided that your roof is just fine. "Good luck," says the roofer. "Whatever you decide to do, just don't call us."
Aargh! The worse thing about hail damage is trying to navigate between two radically different evaluations from two different sources, each of whom has every incentive to mislead you (albeit in different directions). Every time I hear hail on my roof, I cringe in anticipation of the aftershock that is soon to arrive in the form of the roofers and the insurance carrier. They might smile at you, but your happiness is not even in the universe of the thoughts and motivations of either of them. Honestly, I would rather get a colonoscopy without any anesthesia than deal with the aftermath of what might or might not be hail damage to my roof.
So, the last couple of times I thought we might have hail damage, my independent insurance agent recommended that I call Absolute Roofing. Each time, Paul Cain came out to my house, jumped up on my roof (well, he probably used a ladder; I wasn't watching closely) and gave me a completely honest and reliable evaluation at no charge to me. The first two times, he told me I did not have damage justifying an insurance claim. Not surprisingly, I called him again on the third occasion. This time, he identified damage. I filed a claim with my carrier. When the adjustor came out to see for himself, Paul was in attendance and showed the adjustor what he had found. When, after the claim was paid, Paul's crew discovered some previously hidden damage, Paul went to bat with the carrier to get a substantial increase in the amount paid for the claim. I am convinced that the insurers give a great deal of weight to what Paul says precisely because they know he is an honest guy who is not trying to trick the carriers into paying on bogus or inflated claims. Paul got the full increase he requested.
That was just for starters. Paul explained everything to me in language that I could understand and educated me about my options without trying to sell me more than I needed. Absolute Roofing showed up when they said they would. The job was done in exactly the time frame promised. And the bill was exactly what the estimate was. They also did a fantastic job; they don't cut corners. They treat your home like they would treat their own. What a concept.
A few years ago, I never would have imagined that I would use the words "honest" and "roofer" in the same sentence. However, that is exactly who these people are. They are knowledgeable. They do good work. Most importantly, they are honest because they treat their customers as the people who matter. I cannot overstate my recommendation of these guys. They are like day to night in comparison with every other roofer I have had the displeasure to encounter. Do not even think twice about it; just call these guys.
