When you think of a storm chaser, what comes to mind? Someone who spends the spring chasing a rad tornado through the Midwest, right? Yeah, me too. But in the roofing industry a storm chaser is something completely different.
Classic Storm Chaser…(from the movie Twister)
When someone in the roofing industry refers to a storm chaser, they most likely mean a company that follows weather patterns during peak destructive times in order to bank on damaged homes. Just like Justin Bieber dating girls that are in their peak destructive season. For example, let’s say it is May in the Texas/Oklahoma region. A storm chaser will follow storms around to each city hit by hail or a tornado “repairing” the damaged roofs and using the homeowners’ insurance to do it. Unfortunately, the “repairing” is often done very poorly – like Bieber’s music (if that’s what you want to call it.). They quickly install your roof so they can move on to the next hail damaged or tornado-torn roof. What is really concerning is the way they advertise themselves, taking advantage of those families who are affected by the weather. They often will act as though they are insurance specialists specifically for reconstruction and rehabilitation. This is not accurate. They are merely trying to make money off of a homeowner’s strife – like how Justin is making money off of his neighbor’s strife (free publicity!)
After your home’s roof has been damaged by a hail storm, the storm chaser will bear down on your neighborhood, offering services they can barely accomplish and like Justin Bieber’s hair they cut corners with the way things are replaced, the quality of the work, and how much actually gets completed. Often times, you will lose the entirety of the insurance check to the storm chaser and because storm chasers are only in an area long enough to get a check, guarantees on their work are difficult for you to obtain. And like Justin, a storm chaser is certainly not going to return to the scene of their crime! However, some storm chasers lease local company names putting the guarantee on the local business to fix their shoddy work. But imagine what that does to the local repair business. The guarantee job will not make the local business any money and the number of guarantee jobs is so large that the local business cannot sustain the work and materials needed. The local repair business has to shut down and this leaves the homeowner with a house still falling apart and produces a whole new storm in the homeowner’s life.
As you can probably imagine, a legitimate roofing company would be very weary of storm chasers conning their clients. Storm chasers swoop in after a hail storm and sell their con door to door, often making the homeowner immediately sign their lives away. They use high pressure sales tactics to push the customer into a roofing contract often using roofing crews they find off of craigslist. Beware of these storm chasers.
How do I spot a Storm Chaser?
Here are some telltale signs that the person standing on your doorstep is a storm chaser:
- out of state license plates
- a driver’s license with an address not from your part of the state
- lack of producing recent referrals from other homeowners or local vendors
- lack of certifications, especially with matching names
We encourage you to ask questions, ask to see their credentials and certifications, check for a website and make sure they have a local physical address and not a P.O. Box.
So what can you do to stop Storm Chasers??
Go with a roofer who is an established local who has a GAF Master Elite Contractor certification like Old Pro Roofing! We are Dallas Fort Worth natives, we live here, work here, and raise our families here and when all the roofs have been repaired from the storm, we’ll still be here to serve you.
Call the roofing contractor Fort Worth trusts:
For Fort Worth area call: (817) 929-7663
For Dallas area call: (972) 975-7663