Is this roofer trying to rip me off?

hiphopopotamus

Hi all,

I'm buying a house which I know has a couple of loose tiles. I wanted to get a roofer out to check it over and make sure there weren't any serious problems.

I phoned a local roofer who said they'd check it out but it would cost £60 for a call-out fee. So we arrange for them to come around last night.

They turned up at the property (I wasn't there, but the seller was), took some measurements from the outside then went without even knocking on the door.

After not having been able to get in touch with them all day, I got a voicemail about 6:30 this evening asking me to call back to arrange payment and send the quote over.

Does this sound fishy to anyone else? They can't assess the roof and provide a quote for repair work by looking at the roof from ground level, outside, in the dark can they?

MonsieurFrugal

Any decent company will give you free quotes.

You'll have to pay them as you agreed to it!

Personally I'd go else where

hiphopopotamus

Thanks for replying.

They do free quotes if you own the house, but charge if it's for a potential buy, which is fine.

I was expecting them to check the beams properly from the inside though.

I don't see how they can tell if any water damage has been done due to the loose tiles just by looking from outside in the dark.

theGrinch

if you dont have confidence in them, then you need to look elsewhere.

Rotor

MonsieurFrugal wrote: »

Any decent company will give you free quotes.

You'll have to pay them as you agreed to it!

Personally I'd go else where

Ordinarily you would have to pay but the roofer is expected to show reasonable levels of competence and I think he would struggle with that.
You can't properly assess any roof problems with no internal access, from the ground , in the dark.

Don't pay!

hiphopopotamus

That's what I was thinking, thanks.