70 year old neighbour being ripped off by roofer 'friend', what should I do?

trickys77

Hi,

I recently had my roof re-done (felt installed) and after several quotes all around £3000-£6000 for a 3 bed semi I was pleased to accept a qoute for £3,400 who had the best references. They did the whole job in 4 days and did a cracking job. (I inspected it daily to see what they had done and how well they had done it.) They used fully breathable felt, the pointing and lead flashing was spot on. All in all very happy with the job.

Then comes along this guy who seems to be a 'personal friend' of my next door neighbour and tells me that they are doing it all wrong; hadn't used breathable felt etc etc (all rubbish since it says breathable all over it!) I spoke to my neighbour (70ish old guy living on his own) after he had gone and he confirmed that he had known him for a long time and considered him a personal friend.

After my roofers had left they kindly left the scaffolding in place for another week so that I could paint the house. One day I came over to my house to find someone on my roof up my scaffold! It turns out that the 'personal friend' from next door had send 2 people around to fix my neighbours roof and was using my scaffold to do it. This wasn't a major issue for me except they made a right mess leaving rubbish everywhere, cut tiles right next to my newly painted house and lifted up my new lead flashing at one point. On one occasion I found them one of my scaffold planks balanced on the 2 house anex's to support to weight of around 50 roof tiles! That's alot of weight to be on 1 tile each side and since my pointing was fresh I wasn't to happy and asked them to put it back.

Over the next few days they seemed to be doing a really bad job with scrappy pointing and taking off just patches of tiles at a time from my neighbours house, sometimes missing tiles off the roof during heavy rain. 3 weeks on they are still 'working' on it. They seem to appear for a day then disappear for a week. Most of the time they are onsite they are smoking, eating or talking. Now they are doing the whole of his roof (replacing the felting like mine), but when I spoke to my neighbour today he told me that 'his friend' was charging him £18,000!!!! He looked a bit shocked when I told him what I paid for mine.

He seems to justify it to himself that he was getting a 'proper job' and that it would last alot longer than mine because they were doing it to regulation etc. He said that 'his friend' had told him that my roofers were doing this that and the other all wrong and that he expected that they were doing it on the cheap.

The conversation got a bit unconfortable when I started to pull appart what his roofer friend had been telling him (that the felt was £500 a roll for starters!) and that the highest qoute that I had of 6 was £6000.

In the end he said he was happy and that was that.

Obviously they are a bunch of cowboys and are screwing him over. It sounds like they have been for years (acting as his friend) as they also did the back of his roof a few years ago for £5000 (just a small section on the back of his roof). I'm now in a very difficult position where I want to do something about it, but don't want the cowboys to ruin my roof in spite whilst they are up there. Plus my neighbour doesn't want to believe that his friend is screwing him over....Everything is telling me to just leave it, but to be honest I feel sick to my stomach that someone would do this to someone else.

Any advice from the forum about what I should do?

Sorry for the long message by the way!

Hippychick

Contact age concern, they can help if you believe an elderly person is being taken advantage of.

You may be able to request that it's looked into anonymously.

keystone

I think you've done what you can. You've told him what you have paid for a proper job and if he wants to take no notice then thats his problem but unfortunately thats a symptom of his age. Has he got family you can "tip off"?

Otherwise if you've got a couple of big mates you can "discuss" it with the gentleman. One or two of THESE might help win the argument.

Cheers

baldelectrician

This happened to my mate (in his 30's). Don't get involved as you will be seen to be the 'bad un'

My mate got a timber and damp companu in to do damp proofing and other works.
They found an alcove with woodworm on a wooden lintol.
To remove existing wood and replace concrete lintol £400 (a lintol that size is £13.00 trade, and they needed 2)

Follow your instinct

vaio

Interesting thread here.....

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2545053

trickys77

Thanks for your answers. Age concern is a good idea. I think I will also capture as many details about the company as possible and fill in this:

http://www.ripofftipoff.net/

roddydogs

Seriously, are you in the North? £3,400 for a new roof + felt+doing a good job seems incredibly cheap.

foxwales

Contact trading standards and inform them of what is going on, your neighbour is vulnerable and is being taken advantage of, they will crack down on this if they can.

trickys77

Midlands. I had 6 qoutes ranging £3200 and £5800. Using most of the old tiles so just batton, felt and re-lead:

Full house scaffold for a week - £500
Felt - £500
Battons, nails, cement etc etc - £300
Lead - £200
20% wastage on tiles - £100
1 days work for 3 guys (remove tiles & setup) - £600 (assuming £200 a day per person)
3 days work for 2 guys (felt, batton & tile) - £1200 (assuming £200 a day per person)

Total - £3400

I don't see why it would cost much more than this?

....£18,000 is totally out of the question for installing roofing felt and still using all the old tiles.

G51shopaholic

Does your neighbour have any family members you could speak to?

As the old saying goes - A fool and their money are easily parted.

He may have to learn the hard way - tell them to stay off your scaffolding incase they cause damage to your roof or worse, start using
material from your roof to your neighbours roof!

trickys77

No I don't think he has any family. It was fathers day yesterday and he had no visitors.

My scaffold was taken down a few weeks ago luckily, but they still come onto my property with their ladders every so often for some unknown reason to access his roof. No warning or permission asked. Luckily I took photos before, during and after my roof work so I have a full photo evidence, but even still I don't want to have any issues in the first place. I've been checking my roof daily to make sure they are not damaging it....So far no visable damage.

If I report them to trading standards I risk upsetting/stressing my elderly neighbour (who thinks this guy is a friend) and the roofing firm who seem to be very dodgy indeed. They would know straight away that it was me and could damage the house whilst I'm not there or cause me no end of issues.