More Victims of Roofing Scams

GREENSBORO – A Rocky Mount man was arrested this morning after police said he attempted to defraud an elderly woman by tearing a large hole in her roof and trying to charge her for the repairs.

At 11:30 a.m., Greensboro police were called to 608 Wicker St. after a man said he believed two men were there attempting to defraud his mother.

Carlton Ramm said his mother, 91-year-old Frances Ramm, was approached by two men while out trimming bushes in her yard.

He said the men claimed there was a small problem with his mother’s chimney and offered to repair it for about $15. The woman agreed, but police believe the men got on the roof and started tearing away shingles around the chimney and created a 2-foot-by-4-foot hole.

Carlton Ramm said he called his mother about the same time and she told him about the men working on the house and became suspicious.

He said the men told his mother the small repair was much worse than they originally thought and that it would cost $1,200 for the repairs. The son called police.

Police arrived and arrested the two men on site, though only one was charged in the incident.

Cedric Renwood Pierce, 57, of Rocky Mount was arrested and charged with obtaining property by false pretense, malicious damage to personal property and exploitation of an elderly person, said Lt. Hope Newkirk of Greensboro police.

A second man, 38-year-old Randall Scott Weeks, Pierce’s alleged accomplice, was arrested on an outstanding fraud charge on unrelated case, but was not charged in this morning’s incident.

The men were taken to the Guilford County jail in Greensboro and their bonds were not immediately available.

Carlton Ramm said his mother never gave the men any money and that a contractor estimated the damage to the home at about $700 to repair.

Police said their investigation is ongoing and they are trying to determine whether the men are connected to any similar schemes targeting the elderly in the area.

Anyone with further information or who may have been targeted or victimized in a similar scheme is encouraged to call Greensboro police at 373-2255.

http://www.news-record.com/content/2010/09/22/article/man_charged_in_roofing_scheme_targeting_elderly

American Shingles Still in the News

American Shingle & Siding sent workers to neighborhoods across the Charlotte area with a shiny promise: a new roof at no cost to you.

George Bostick of south Charlotte - like several thousand homeowners in 10 states - paid the company upfront with a check from his insurance company for hail damage. 

That was early May. American Shingle called later that month to postpone the roofing work. Another postponement came in June. 

Three months since he handed over his $5,500 insurance check, and despite calls and letters to the company's headquarters, Bostick hasn't gotten the work he paid for or a refund. 

"I didn't check them out," says Bostick, a 66-year-old independent trucker. "And that was a no-no."

The N.C. attorney general's office is investigating American Shingle, which is headquartered in the Atlanta area but advertises offices in Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh, as well as Greenville, S.C., Columbia and eight other states. The attorney general's consumer protection division has 54 consumer complaints similar to Bostick's, a spokesperson said Thursday. 

Atlanta's Better Business Bureau had registered more than 200 and gives the company its lowest rating, an "F." 

Tom Bartholomy of Charlotte's Better Business Bureau says this is the hardest hit to consumers by a roofing vendor that he has seen in 28 years with the organization. His office has just 12 formal complaints but more than 2,000 calls about the company since it started work in Charlotte last December.

The Observer's calls to American Shingle & Siding Inc.'s offices in the Atlanta area and Charlotte on Thursday got the same recorded message, saying the company was experiencing heavy call volume and asking the caller to wait or call back later. The message repeated for several minutes.

The Charlotte office in an office park off Westinghouse Boulevard is empty, WCNC-TV reported. The landlord says employees packed up without a word. 

A Georgia television station reported this week that American Shingle CEO Carlton Dunko said in an interview that the company got caught in a cash flow shortage. American Shingle has about 3,500 customers nationwide waiting for new roofs, and Dunko estimated he has checks from between 50 and 70 customers that he plans to return, the station reported. 

American Shingle followed a model that descends on neighborhoods hit by hailstorms: The company promised to help secure insurance money for damaged roofs. And it asked homeowners to sign a contract to let their company do the work. 

But there were warning signs. Officials of the Better Business Bureau were bothered by complaints about American Shingle's advertising. 

"They were leaving flyers that said, 'You have hail damage.' That was from a visual inspection on the ground, where you can't tell," Bartholomy said. There were also reports of salesmen showing up with a free pizza and this pitch: Enjoy it while we inspect your roof. 

Bostick said several roofing companies appeared in his neighborhood after a hailstorm this spring. He thought many were too pushy, but the American Shingle sales rep was likable and low-key. 

He "assured us he could get us insurance money to replace our roof at no cost to us," Bostick said.

The salesman promised to send an estimator to meet with the insurance representative and go up on the roof to get an estimate for replacing it, Bostick said. "The insurance company would send us a check and we'd turn it over to them. In return, we'd have to guarantee they would get the job." 

Better Business Bureau guidelines says that's a mistake: A one-third deposit toward the total payment is standard. And consumers should get at least three estimates and learn more about the company they select., including how long it's been doing business in the area. 

Although a neighbor did get a refund from American Shingle, Bostick is still waiting.

His house did get a new roof. 

"I paid for it from my own pocket," he said. "So I'm out that money unless I get it back from American Shingle."

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/08/20/1632874/nc-attorney-general-probes-roof.html#ixzz0x9SVRESM

Local Roofing Company Scam on WSOCTV

http://www.wsoctv.com/money/24440545/detail.html

Jackie and Kerren Taylor said their roof is leaking from damage done during a hailstorm.

They said they made a $3,400 down payment to American Shingle Roofing, using an insurance check, to re-roof the house.

The payment was made in early May, the Taylors said, but the company told them it will be October before they get a new roof.

“Yeah, I'm angry because we can’t do anything about it,” Kerren Taylor said. “They [have] got our money.”

The Taylors said they asked for their money back, but were told they'd have to pay a 10 percent penalty fee.

They said they know others in their neighborhood who are in similar situations, stuck with damaged roofs months after signing contracts with American Shingle.

“You can walk the neighborhood and almost know who American Shingle got a hold of because the roofs aren't done,” Kerren Taylor said.

The Taylors’ complaint isn’t the first one Action 9 has gotten about American Shingle. Last week, an Action 9 story aired about Ella Frazier, who said she paid the company $4,800 up front, but waited three months without a new roof.

After Action 9 got involved in Frazier’s problem, the company overnighted a refund check to her.

The Better Business Bureau currently gives the company an ‘F’ rating.

“They've made a lot of promises on how they're going to improve things,” BBB President Tom Bartholomy said.

He said until the company makes those improvements, it will continue to have an ‘F’ rating.

Bartholomy said American Shingle has a sales staff selling lots of roofs, but not many roofers to do the jobs.

“They hire their roofers off of craigslist,” he said.

Action 9 contacted American Shingle and a spokesman said they were starting work in the Taylors’ neighborhood, but sent them a refund check.

Still, Jackie Taylor said the experience left him bitter.

“You don't do business this way,” he said.

To avoid trouble hiring roofers, Action 9’s Don Griffin recommends checking them out first with the BBB and not paying them until after you're satisfied with the work.

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

Welcome to the Blog

Welcome to the new Ridgeline Exteriors Inc. blog.  We have established this blog in the hopes to improve our visibility in the community.  Through this blog we hope to answer your questions and concerns about all things exterior on your house.

First, a little bit about our company.  We started in 2004 as a general contracting company.  Our focus was on building quality homes.  We spent time building homes around North Carolina as we built in strong markets such as Raleigh, Charlotte, and Union County.  While building these houses, and with the new home market declining, we saw an opportunity to begin a new business venture that had the potential to succeed.

After building numerous houses we grew more and more disgruntled with our hired subcontractors, specifically any of those dealing with the outside of our homes.  We saw an opportunity here and decided to create our own roofing company.  We immediately saw success in the roofing market and grew naturally into doing siding and gutters.  We found a strong clientèle that simply liked the idea that we would do what we said, would stand behind our workmanship, and would call people back immediately.  These principles are what still guide us today.

Today, we find our business surrounded by unique opportunities to expand.  We adapt each day to the changing world by using technology to improve our quality of work.  We continue to innovate.  With services like SkyView and MyHome we continue to explore new ideas and ways to help you, our consumers.  SkyView is technology that allows us to see your home from images taken by Cessna aircraft.  These images are then used to measure roofs accurately and without the hassle of bothering a homeowner.  We still love to come out and meet with homeowners when they want it.  We also know that when you are home, there's other things you want to do than meet a contractor.

MyHome is another innovation we have added to our company.  MyHome allows us to take a picture of your home before doing any work and show you what certain shingles and siding would look like.  We are able to change the colors and manufacturers to match exactly what you would purchase.  These innovations are what keep us one step ahead of the crowd.

This blog will be regularly maintained as we look to help residents connect with us in better ways.