Below is a letter I was going to send to Bruno at Let it Rain, I have finally recovered from this nightmare and decided to share my experience here so others may be forewarned. Let it Rain has a severe lack of communication between themselves and their customer. Just too many cooks to spoil the broth.
Dear Bruno,
I am one who diligently researches contractors who would best suit my expectations and complete my needs professionally, with quality workmanship, customer communication and satisfaction.Let it rain, has been in business since early 1990, is well known for quality work and even represented on CFRB talk Radio 1010. Let it rain , are said to be a "GAF Master Elite",factory certified roofing contractor. This is why I chose "Let It Rain", to get the job done on my roof, and I also recommended you for my (attached) neighbor. I now am apologizing to my neighbor, due to my under estimate of professionalism of "Let It Rain".
Jan gave a very thorough and knowledgeable presentation of your services and products. Even though" Let It Rain",was about $1500 more expensive than other competitors, I still chose you, feeling confident that you would not fail to please me with my roof installation.
Boy , what a mistake . My Neighbor and I have been mislead, ignored, and repeatedly ignored by not communicating with us, not returning emails, not returning phone calls, even to personal cellphones of you supervisors and not informing us when your installation crews would return. The job started on May 4th 2015, and still is not complete as I write this on May 25th 2015. We live in semi detached 900 square foot homes, not huge mansions requiring a lot of time to complete.
Our experience with you has been a nightmare right from the start.
Jan came and looked into our attics because we had a concern of attic mold, he was to estimate how many roof boards would need to be replaced. To my delight, Jan said very little mold was present and only a few (5 or 6 boards) would need replacing. This gave myself and my neighbor the go ahead to place our roof orders with "Let It Rain", because now the price would be in line with what was originally quoted and budgeted for.
Jan said "Mario", would call me to arrange an appropriate install date. On or about April 22nd 2015, my wife called me at work and was very upset to see a huge crane unloading mountains of roof shingles and and other materials on top of our roofs. I came home and read my email, one from my neighbor, saying Mario had contacted him for an installation date of Thursday, the next day, my neighbor told your Mario, it would be OK as long as (myself) would agree to this. I then checked my voice mail on my home phone where Mario left a message regarding this at about 7:25 am that day. (Everyone in my house were at work already at that time). I immediately called Mario and told him that his date would be impossible, and rescheduled for Monday May 4th 2015 ,where I would be home for the entire week on vacation. Meanwhile the roof shingles were piled up high in stacks of 11 or so and damaging and bending our roof boards for the next 11 days, plus the fear of rolls of material and other equipment falling off the roof in the next 11 days were prevalent .
During the installation, we found many,many,roof boards with mold and or dry rot needed replacement. My neighbor and I cringed at every roof board being ripped off our roofs @ $60 a board, where we thought there would only be 5 or 6 boards per side , it turned out to be about 29-30 boards per side replaced (still not yet determined). This is a wack of cash and we probably would have postponed the job till more funds were available, but we were at ''Let It Rains" mercy staring at our shingle stripped roofs.
There were several problems with the installation, 2 roof exaust vents where installed directly over the center of a roof rafter. I explained my concern to the foreman of your crew who seemed to think this was normal and he said he does this all the time to make it look centered on the roof and said he would ask his supervisor about this. He said he had never had a complaint about this. My drip edge molding was improperly installed as to "GAF'' standards where the corners were not bent and closed but left open with large gaps showing, the drip edge molding was not properly nailed down in many areas and still is not proper. These problems have mostly been fixed by Daniel and Joel.
Joel came to my house the next week to ensure proper ventilation was installed at the soffits, and repair anything that was a problem. Joel cut 6 large holes under my soffits and installed styrofoam baffles into them, three on the front ,three on the side, actually only two on the side, found after stripping the soffits for new ones from another contractor. I was up inside my attic to ensure that I could see the baffles were installed correctly. They barely made it out over the insulation edge at the roof board. Some I just could not see if they were there. I don't think it is my responsibility as a customer to be inside the attic to ensure proper installation of the baffles and venting , it should be "Let it Rains" responsibility. When I asked Joel how many holes were cut on the top half of the house he said "None". He had no idea what was done to the back and was not instructed to do anything there. You would think the back half of the house would have to vented as well as the front half. As of today I have not heard from Daniel, Joel or Jan whom I have repeatability tried to contact with email and voice messages regarding this issue to complete my job. My neighbor has not heard from anyone either! My neighbor has also noted to me that your installers have damaged his front eaves trough by placing their ladder against it without proper protection. This will have to be fixed.(and later was replaced)
Update as of May 27th 2015.
After many times and days trying to contact Daniel, he had agreed on Tuesday May 26th 2015 to send Joel here to cut out 6 more soffit holes in the upper half of my house. At 4:00 pm today Wednesday, No sign of Joel, no phone calls no nothing, I called many times to Daniel with no response until the last minute he sent an Email saying he is not coming due to high winds, and rescheduled for Thursday May 27th 2015.
Update : On may 27th 2015,
Not one, not two, but three let it rain trucks arrived at my home, along with another Supervisor "Ralph", as though Daniel needed backup. I was advised at this time that no further work would be done until I paid upfront the original contract amount. I was astounded that Let it Rain would stoop this low with their unprofessional-ism and try to intimidate me with a payment for what I firmly believed was an incomplete job. I explained my thoughts to him and again to Daniel where I would definitely not be issuing a cheque this day and demanded a discount of some sort for all the BS and generally poor customer service and my complete dissatisfaction and horrific experience of the simple task of replacing my roof over the duration of almost four weeks ! Your crew said they were going to leave and contact you " Bruno", for further instructions.
Well it turns out your crew did not leave my premisses, and spoke by phone to you "Bruno", who in turn did offer a small discount on the whole (about less than $700). Your crew and yourself did not offer any apologies, or acknowledgment of "Let It Rains " total unsatisfactory and very un-proffessional behavior to myself and my neighbor who has experienced similar dis-respect in both customer service and workmanship.
I was however, very happy to get "Let It Rain" out of my hair and out of my way.
Upon inspection of my roof with Ralph and Daniel, we found a small tear/broken shingle at the top cut edge of my valley ,where Ralph said they would repair this when Daniel came back to fix my neighbors roof problems. This has yet to be done, once again I am not surprised. Daniel delivered my warranty package and finalized invoice at my door to my wife, and then quickly disappeared without seeing or talking to me directly. The finalized invoice is also incorrect with material supplied and installed, particularly the exhaust vents, which were 6 not 4 and 50 square inch not 75 square inch, plus there was no pre painted flashing installed where I can see.
In closing, based upon my experience with "Let It Rain", I do not understand how you have attributed so many positive reviews, and qualified as a Master Elite installer of GAF products.
I am sure you will appreciate my writing to you ,the owner of "Let It Rain", and I am confident this experience does not reflect the true way you and "Let It Rain" treat your customers. You even state this on your web sight by quoting " We'll install your roof as if it were my own" .
- Approximate cost of services:
- $9,000.00