Warranty Cover Interior Damage

MEL

It’s been raining here today and I got a call back to a job we did 4 weeks ago.

Water is dripping out of a light fixture.

I went in the attic to investigate and found a plumbing pipe leak.

The elbow in the plumbing vent pipe is leaking and it’s located directly over the light fixture. You can see the rotted plywood near the elbow indicating it’s been leaking for a long time.

I told the owner that I am not responsible and that I wanted to get paid fore a service call.

He refused to pay me because he says it never leaked before I did the roof. He said he wouldn’t pay me even if a plumber confirmed that it is not a roof leak.

I think obligating myself for interior repairs could open up a can of worms.

If we did something that caused interior damage I may offer to fix it at my own discretion but i don’t want to obligate myself in writing to fix interior damage because it’s a wide open door for all kinds of B.S.

Attached Thumbnails

   

__________________
MEL

Safety1st2009

@ Mr Roofer, we are in the same city and we do have it stipulated in our contracts that interior is covered provided it is legit, essentially its in the wording of your workmanship warranty, we dont go out to make friends when we estimate but we have also had return customers as well as getting a true feeling of satisfaction from christmas cards and such from clients who have been more then pleased with our work, perhaps it is because we monitor all of our crews including subs daily or perhaps the workshops we have for our up and comers or perhaps its because we spend just a little more time thinking about the customer's needs and how we ourselves like to be treated, it isnt just about the money, nor should it be Mr Scrooge, and it is truly all in the wording of a contract and educating your potential client base, give them the facts up front, there will always be a handful of problematic customers, dependant on how you react is dependant on how big of a kerfuffle is about to ensue

Travis

Work everyday of the week? Not me,that will lead to burnout, need at leat 1 day off a week.

BamBamm5144

Douggar, I was just up in your area and I just realized it from reading where you are located at. I was doing a siding soffit fascia and window job for a guy I know back here right off of the campus. Whole place seems nice and safe.

MrRoofer

Ya know, I feel pretty well satisfied with all the xmas cards we get too, however, they are seriously starting to take up space , and as sad as it may seem, they may have to go!

Rest assured, little Tim does very well come Xmas. What he does with his lot isn't up to me, and if he chooses to piss it away, well, he will probably keep coming back and begging for more. They always do. Maybe I should be fixing the world instead of roofs.

Now if I had just the slightest hint of punctuaion amongst the drivel, I might be able to take you seriously here. Don't call people names, and they won't shred you a new one.



Rest assured I can appreciate the ideals behind the drive, I don't know of anyone who has broken more than myself over the years, or been taken to the cleaners as many times. However none of that is going to change the world, and I am quite sane in my realization of this, we are in a capitalist, free market system, so either get on board with that and succeed with it, or perpetually struggle against it.



I am not here to devalue myself, I do not have a problem with that, I do not understand why you do. We live and work in the same city and the same trade. Then I would assume we both know how grievous this line of work can be. You can fight for the right fair ethical value of things all you want, I guess that is going to leave me to fight for the dollars.



The party is at Little Tim's anyway.

__________________
'I'm living on the edge!'

Grumpy

HI another copy and past from my written guarantee...

8. If ***, Inc. investigates a guarantee issue and finds the problems to be unrelated to our work or not covered by the scope of this warranty, service charges may apply for the diagnosis and repair.

and

11. This warranty is only valid if accepted in entirety. This warranty is accepted as a whole or not at all.



So you see contractually they are obligated to pay me if I choose to play hard ball. In addition if they choose not to pay me, they risk voiding of their workmanship warranty. I have never charged a customer before. I have told a few "Now I've been here twice and each time it hasn't been my fault and next time I'm goign to have to start charging." Another thing I suggest, is when you do these service calls and it's not your fault, send an invoice for the time spent, $225 is our minimum charge in these cases, and on the invoice give them a customer courtesy credit of the same. This shows them that your time is not free and you did them a big favor.


Having said that, let me tell you a recent story. We isntalled a TPO roof that is a balcony and has siding on 4 sides. It leaked. Well no it didn't leak but the customer called frantic that it was leaking. Based on the location of the leak, we did some caulking where the roof meets the siding, meets a door. A day later it didn't seem to help. So we tapred the whole thing, visit number 2. I went back there with the original inspector as well as my TPO foreman and we spent about an hour inspecting, removing siding, movign tarps etc. I found two suspect areas not related to the work we did on other sections of the building, Ie: the metal chimney as well as a shingle roof section and explained to the customer we needed to come back on a dry day to do a hose test and this was visit number 3. On visit number 4 I sent two guys who did a hose test and were not able to make the roof leak until we splashed the two suspect areas I found on the areas of the building unrelated to the work we installed. Instant leaks! That was visit number 4. How many man hours we have invested in these two leaks which we did not cause?! I don't know yet and am scared to find out.


I am not going to charge them for our time. Why? The customer is soooo amazingly happy at our response that I doubt she is going to call anyone else for the repairs of these sections. While we are not qualified to fix the metal chimney, we are qualified to fix her shingle roof. Infact we are encouraging her to replace the shingle roof and her brother who works for some construction company is in agreement with us. In addition, I'm not charging her for our time because I was fully prepared to eat it just to satisfy my own conscience that the leak was not related to the work we did and if it was I was fully prepared to eat the cost to fix the problem.

However if I had a jerk off like the guy you mentioned who said he flat out wouldn't pay... Oh man that's a challenge and I like challenges "Excuse me Sir, you did sign a contract and on the contract it said you agreed to our service agreement on the reverse side of the contract and in that service agreement is states that you would pay us for the service call and futher more it states that if you don't accept the entire warranty the warranty is void. In other words pay me now of you will no longer have a warranty on your roof from this point forward." I'd smile saying it to a guy seemingly as much of a jerk as you made it appear.

It's always the last guy's fault. "It wasn't leaking before." While there is the possibility that someone may have disturbed the pipe in some way, it's unlikely since it is protected from the interior. Yes it may not have been leaking before but there is such a thing as coincedence.


Douger, when I roof a house with existing skylights, no matter the condition, I specifically exclude them from my warranty. I've had too many problems with old skylights leaking a few years afer we install the roof that now; I always give them a line item price to replace the skylights and in that line item price write a note that the skylights are excluded from the above warranty unless replaced with the roof. I also make it a point to verbally explain why and that explination is simple I can not warrant pre-existing materials.


We just installed a roof about a month ago and I got the call on friday that the roof was leaking around a skylight. I was very impressed with the work we did and couldn't beleive it was leaking. I got out to the job almost immediately and looked from the inside. when I climbed on the outside and looked at the flashing it was great. I pushed against the glass and saw there was an immense ammount of water trapped between the two panes of acrylic glass. I told the customer what the problem is and gave him an estimate to replace the skylight. They are 50 year old skylights anyways, but the customer was trying to go cheap. it's going to cost him $300 more now than it would have if we have had done it witht he roof.

MEL

When the customer told me about my competitors warranty over the phone I asked if he could show it to me in writing.

A guy that works for me knows a salesperson that works for the one of the competitors in question.

He said they do cover it in their warranty but they always try to get out of it if a claim occurs. They blame it on ice back up which is excluded for example.

When I went back to get the contract signed the subject never came up.

__________________
MEL