Days of heavy rains caused a small leak in my laundry room. I contacted several companies on 12/21/23 & reached Preferred Roofing Co. The owner, David Paine was sympathetic but said he was way to busy to repair the leak but offered to come put up a tarp to temporarily fix the problem until he freed up. My 6 yr old roof never had a leak in 5 1/2 years so I figured it was a quick fix. Quote was $1200 to put up the temporary tarp. I needed to sign a tarping agreement and pay for it immediately before anyone would come out. $1200 felt expensive, but I was nervous about more heavy rains coming and I wanted to protect my home. I re-read the tarp agreement and the fourth paragraph of the agreement says "an estimator will be coming to your home to give you an estimate in the near future. If you would like Preferred Roofing company to perform the necessary repairs, the estimator will deduct a portion of the Tarping cost towards that repair." Thought, OK, the tarp is temporary and I'll get an estimate for the repair next week and then I'll get it fixed with this company if possible, or with another qualified roofer. In the meantime, the roof would be protected. I signed & paid the $1200 & the guys were dispatched quickly. The guys took an hour or so putting up a 20x20 foot tarp & left. My actual leak problem had not been addressed/fixed but the tarp was now in place so I suppose they did their job. I was not informed that his men would HAMMER 3 INCH NAILS through furring strips directly through my shingles into more than 20 feet of my roof causing significant damage to my roof and now I was over a barrel. The tarp DID stop the leak when it rained again that night so it did initially protect my roof. BUT, when David came the next week, he did not go up on the roof and move the tarp out of the way to give me an estimate for the actual repair as I was expecting. He stood in my driveway, said he would not remove the roof tarp for 8-12 wks as he was just too busy & that I should just relax and trust him because the roof was protected. I was not comforted by the tarp sitting on my roof but rather, I was concerned because we had extremely high winds (50-80 mph) in the forecast over the next few weeks and the tarp agreement says that if the tarp blows off or gets damaged you're out of luck and you have to pay again to have it replaced. During his "from the ground only" free roof inspection, David also discussed repairing a small section of roof on the front porch overhang and said how hard it would be to find amber shingles to match our roof if we needed to pull up shingles. He said it may look odd and that it would look better and might be more cost effective if we just re-roofed the entire front of the house. He was kind enough to provide an $11,000 quote which may have been be a good price for that scope of work but the actual problem turned out to be a two minute repair. After his visit, a few days later David sent a $1900 "roof maintenance" quote which included: a roof inspection (the website says that's free), clean the gutters, seal & paint pipes and I assume to repair the newly damaged shingles. The costs were starting to add up: $1200, $1900, $11,000 and still no quote to repair my original leak. That would be extra! The huge nailed down tarp visually blocked the leaking area so no other roofing contractor would be able to see the roof to diagnose and fix the original problem. The only way for anyone to assess the problem was for them to remove the nails and tarp which would now expose the roof to 20 or more potential leaks/holes and more rain heavy was coming! I was beyond frustrated so I sought the opinions of FIVE, well reviewed, licensed roofing contractors who all said you never use nails. They all agreed that it is NOT common practice to put 3 inch nails into a healthy roof, but rather to use sandbags and/or clips to hold a tarp down. All five contractors stated that we were overcharged and that the tarp installation damaged the roof and would need to be repaired. Two of the roofers would not even look at our roof if the tarp was nailed down. Two roofers gave me quotes. One quote was for $6000 to re-roof under all of the tarped area. The second quote for $900-$1200 included fixing the original leak and repairing the new damage to the roof and shingles with roof tar. We went with the second option for now and hope that it is sufficient. This roofer was efficient and even found a small roofing nail over the front porch area and repaired it for free. No $11,000 roof replacement was needed! Preferred Roofing was given the chance to refund some $ to repair the new holes in our roof but they declined claiming they did everything correctly. LESSONS LEARNED: Find a roofer who will take time to walk on top of your roof to inspect it, don't listen to the first roofer you talk to - get multiple quotes, read all the reviews especially the negative ones and NEVER let anyone nail a tarp into your roof. BUYER BEWARE! read more