Simply Google, “How do I pick the right contractor?” and you will discover how many people want to offer their advice on this topic. The funny thing about most of the advice is that it is from other roofing companies trying to convince you that others are trying to scam you. This is a good public service. Reputable companies don’t want their potential customers to be scammed, but is there really an epidemic of Hamilton roofing companies trying to scam people?
Here at Peak Roofing we have written our own blog about how to identify fly by night roofing companies and we stand by this advice. If a company doesn’t have the basic paperwork required to be a professional company, then they shouldn’t be even considered to do your roof. But is there something more sinister going on? Are large roofing companies accusing smaller roofing companies of being fly by night in order to destroy their competition? The truth is that the roofing industry is the only major corner of the home construction market that has professional companies loudly warning home owners about other companies scamming them over and over again.
We have mentioned in another blog that roofers have a bad reputation and in that blog we laid out how roofing is not a glamorous job but it has the honour of being genuine hard work. The other problem facing the roofing industry is that there is no official accreditation for those who choose roofing as a career while you can apprentice as a roofer there is no red seal or journeyman accreditation for roofing. Therefore, the only way for roofing companies to distinguish from one another is longevity in the business and making sure that people are not hiring amateurs is to discredit them by warning everyone that they exist.
This has produced two things in the roofing industry. The first is a general distrust between roofers. Since there is no way to measure the level of training that an individual roofing contractor has without viewing his work, it becomes easy to worry that the industry is being taken over by amateurs. The second thing this has done is help solidify a negative opinion of most roofers as scammers.
What most roofing companies aren’t telling you is that the majority of people who make their living roofing are not trying to scam you. Most roofing companies and most roofing contractors just want to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. Of course there are bad people in the roofing industry, but they aren’t as common as bigger companies pretend they are.
