Morning Edition; Roof Repairs

It's morning edition on K-RPS. I'm Fred Fletcher-Fierro. With the warmer weather that we've had so far this spring, many of us are looking to make repairs and improvements to our homes. This includes replacing or fixing our roofs, which can cost anywhere between 20 and 30 thousand dollars. Stephanie Garland of the Better Business Bureau in Springfield warns consumers to be wary of free unsolicited estimates to fix or repair your roof. And this can be a really big purchase. This can be anywhere from 20 to 30 thousand dollars. This is a huge financial purchase and it's really important that you choose somebody who's trustworthy, who is BBB accredited, who we've checked out, verified, made sure that they're good, honest people, good honest company before he spends so much money on perhaps what is the largest asset financially that you'll ever have your home. According to Stephanie, like clockwork every spring, she starts to hear for more homeowners in Southwest Missouri requesting information on roofing companies that use the state, such as Missouri or Kansas, as part of the name for credibility. She says that's a red flag.

Better Business Bureau sees a huge increase in this time of year online in this area for trusted roofers. So we track our data on BBB.org and every time the spring, the summer, we see a lot of people going and looking for really awesome people to go ahead and hire a great trusted roofer. After the storm in 2011, the area saw an influx of scam construction and roofing companies. Stephanie says there is a familiar narrative when speaking with a fake roofing company. They'll tell you that while you don't need to replace the entire roof, she had a Southwest Missouri consumer tell her that fake roofing companies have damaged people's roofs to get work and blame it on one damage or they show pictures of other damaged roofs and compare them to yours. So the reefer offers a free inspection. The person may claim that their company is working on a neighbor's home. I just thought that this might be convenient, but if you ask questions about where the business located, how the services work,

you're going to get some vague answers like, oh, you know, we're in Web City or, oh, we're in Nevada or, oh, we're in El Dorado Springs, you know, right across from the high school or, you know, something that's not super specific. It can be challenging to discern somebody who appears to be a professional and knows what they're talking about. Apart from someone trying to get you just to write a check, if a company's representative is coming to your door to seek out business, that could be another red flag. So don't hire this company. It can be very, very scary and a really big mistake. So we have a free system, a free program that we offer. It's called get a quote. You can go ahead at any time and submit on bbb.org to trust where the accredited roofers in this area and ask for them to give a free home inspection. Companies will carry out inspections at no charge for customers to fully understand the repairs that need to be made to their homes and its cost. The vast majority of us are not roofers and the majority of us have never been on one roof. Much less to do it for a living, including Stephanie.

Well, I can tell you for sure that I've never actually installed a roof with my own hands, nor will I do. I'm not qualified to do so. So that's why for my family, you know, we always use bbb.org. It's just easy to find somebody who's trustworthy who I can trust to be around my baby who is safe to have outside and these people do a really bang up job and they're also really fast. So whenever you have a roof that needs help, you can find somebody who will do a job right, do right the first time. Stephanie Garland of the Better Business Bureau in Springfield, Missouri, speaking about finding a good roofer and avoiding roofing and postures. For KRPS, I'm Fred Fletcher-Fierro in Web City.