Recently there was a segment on CBC's marketplace regarding fabricated reviews to generate business. This immediately comes to mind when I was looking at the reviews here prior to engaging this company for my roof repair because it is hard to believe that so many positive reviews could result in a bad experience for me. I am sure that Homestars takes all appropriate steps to ensure the legitimacy of reviews and this is why I thought I had a winner when I selected Nomad for the reshingling of my roof.
I contracted with the company in the fall of 2013 for a Spring 2014 job. Shingles were delivered on April 12, 2014. The garbage bin was delivered on April 14, 2014 and completely blocked any vehicle access. I didn't anticipate this to be a problem because the shingling being done in my neighbourhood typically was only a two day affair at most. This bin was picked up April 24th-10 days later.
Most roofers that I saw in my area started a job and finished it within a couple of days. These roofers ( a two man crew) did a small section per day on the days that they were there so it was a short day for them. The area over my double attached garage was shingled on April 15th. The roofers did not show on the 16th or the 17th. The roofers appeared on Good Friday, April 18th after a heavy, wet snowfall so they are trying to do shingling after this snowfall. I had to send them home. It was just ridiculous. April 22nd was the last official day of the job and there was only a small section on the back that had not been completed but it hadn't been done because they were a bundle short. This is actually what the roofer told me because I happened to be there when he came to finish the job. I noticed that he wasn't putting any felt underlay on this section and he told me that he ran out. So what he was telling me essentially is that if you run out of materials, just finish the job with whatever materials you have left. Luckily, I was there at the time and this section was re-done at a later date.
I am not a professional roofer myself but many deficiencies were obvious to me. There was some soffit damage, uncaulked/unsealed nails, missing drip edge (I suppose they ran out of this as well). Another thing I had noticed was that my eavestroughs were not cleaned. The roofer attended to this promptly but service was so "efficient" that he decided to do the cleaning when it was pouring rain. You should have seen the caked mud on my siding after this.
To sum up, there was a complete lack of pride of workmanship for this job. I had noticed also that there were cases of brand new staples thrown in the garbage bin and when this was brought to the foreman's attention, he just made a comment that the roofer wasn't paying for it so just threw away the excess not required at the time. The extension ladder used for the job was also seen in the garbage bin but apparently, this was just a convenient way for them to transport their equipment. The "final" inspection was completed on May 1st and I am fairly enraged by this point because there were till deficiencies noted and these were to be corrected the following week and another re-inspection was to be made to ensure completeness. Following this, I know that there was at least one worker at my house because on May 6th, i noticed a tool left on the edge of my house visible from the street. This tool remained on the roof for a couple of weeks.
The inspection and re-inspection are performed by one of the owners of the company. Despite a promised re-inspection the following week, it was done on...get ready...December 12, 2014.
So you can see from the time this job was contracted to the time it was completed was approximately one year.
I'll mention that despite the problems, the people are very nice and easy to work with despite the problems. It was not what I expected of the job and not representative of other jobs being done in my neighbourhood by other roofers.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $7,000.00
- What could this company do to improve their services?
- There should be better quality control and oversight of what the workers are doing. No job should proceed with insufficient materials.
- Any advice to offer fellow homeowners facing a similar project?
- Keep an eye on the roofers and make sure you get what was promised and paid for.
- Company Response
Thank you for your review. As with all of our customers, we appreciate their honesty when posting onto the HomeStars website. We apologize for your experience with Nomad Roofing and are aware of the problems that occurred during this project. We took what we learned from this job and have since implemented changes to improve our site management. Although the quality of your roof was never jeopardized, we regret that you did not receive the level of service we pride ourselves in. This is why we never collected payment until we were satisfied that the roof met our high standards and passed the post inspection. We’re pleased to hear that throughout this process our staff was easy to work with as communication with our customers, especially when problems arise, is an important focus for us. We take your feedback seriously and will use it as an opportunity to learn and grow.