Angie's List - Roofing Rip-Offs

Today on my desk this morning I found the July 2010 Charlotte magazine from Angie's List.  While a lot of the magazine is a massive ad, it seems this month's edition is focused mostly on roofing rip-offs and homeowners getting taken by scams.  I found it to be a quite interesting read actually and I wanted to share a few parts of it with our readers.

"One in three of you reported having trouble with a roofer."  

"Sixty-eight percent of you detailed problems with shoddy work.  Another 24 percent cited issues with roofers who allegedly overcharged, lacked a license, or took money and ran."

"The Texas Department of Insurance warned Houston-area homeowners earlier this year about roofing contractors who were intentionally wrecking roofs to mimic storm damage to convince residents they needed repairs."

"Asking for references from suppliers or running a credit check can also help you determine if a company is solvent."

"You should ask contractors for proof of workers' compensation and liability insurance.  They should have certificates to prove it and should be happy homeowners asked, because a lot of fly-by-night contractors don't.  If a contractor doesn't have insurance, the homeowner is taking some of the liability if a worker becomes injured on the job site."

"Some industry experts report that shoddy roofing jobs plague many developments built during the housing boom over the last 10 years, resulting in roofs that need replacing after only a few years."

"A recent online member poll revealed that nearly 40 percent who hired a door-to-door roofer said the contractor did shoddy work."

A large portion of this month's magazine is dedicated to the roofing industry.   You can view the main article from the magazine at: http://magazine.angieslist.com/articles/2010/july/national/roofing-rip-off-beware-of-scams-shoddy-contractors.aspx.

Please visit our website at http://www.Ridgeline-Roofing.com

What is SkyView?

First, we hope everyone had a fun and safe July 4th holiday.  The weather this weekend in Charlotte and the surrounding areas was superb.  With that said, we are going to spend this blog post mentioning some more of the technology we use when quoting roofs here at Ridgeline.

We use a lot of technology everyday to try to simplify our jobs and make things easier for our customers.  A lot of customers simply do not have the time to meet with contractors and we certainly understand that.  While it is not required, many people want to be there if you are going to be around there house.  Because of this we wanted to develop a system of doing roof quotes that would allow us to use satellite imagery and images taken from Cessna airplanes.  We found a few software programs that we were able to use that would allow us to do this.

We named this technology SkyView.  You can visit our website for this at: http://www.skyviewroofquote.com.  There you can see exactly what we see when we do this.  We are able to scale these images and using another piece of software we are able to measure your roof more accurate than if we actually pulled a tape on it.  This has allowed our estimates to be even more precise than before and has allowed us to offer roof quotes with absolutely no hassle at all.

We take pride in the work we do and the services we offer.  We feel like one of the thing that separates us from our competitors is the technology we use.  This technology makes our job easier, makes your job easier, and it improves our services even more.  Today, we are more connected than ever with our customers with our company on Facebook, Twitter, and Blogspot.  Through these services we are able to interact directly with our customers.  In addition to that, we are in the process of becoming an accredited business with the Better Business Bureau to further help our reputation in the Charlotte area.

Tomorrow we will take a look at our MyHome section of the website and the great features it allows us to offer our potential customers.

Do Your Own Roofing Estimate

Over the past few months we have worked hard to improve our website.  One of our innovations was to create a roofing estimate calculator.  We created this for users of our website to input basic information about their building and see a rough estimate of what our price may be.

Obviously the tool leaves a lot of room open for error by the user, but we felt like it was something that could help a user understand our prices a little better compared to quotes they have received.  We have further innovations coming.  We are working on integrating another part of the calculator to allow the user to simply input the number of squares they have and see the price we would do the job for.  This type of tool would allow for a user to input information off of a roofing quote they have received and compare it with our quote.  This would allow for a more direct comparison by our users and would allow them to see prices without even needing to call.

We continue to look for ways to innovate the website.  We are always open to suggestions and ways to make it easier to navigate.  This tool is just one of the many things that keep us a step ahead of our competition.

Users can find our roofing estimate tool at: http://ridgeline-roofing.com/estimate.html