Answers · Hiring a roofer
How do I read a roofing company's reviews?
The short answer
Read the distribution rather than the average. Two contractors can both show 4.6 stars and have completely different records, because an average hides how many people were genuinely unhappy. Then read the one and two-star reviews and, more importantly, the company's replies to them.
What each part tells you
- The share of one and two-star ratings, which is the number every listing on this site leads with and compares to the median for that state. It is the field an average is designed to hide.
- The replies. A contractor who answers criticism specifically, without arguing, is showing you how a complaint from you would go.
- Recurring themes in the complaints. Unreturned calls after final payment, leaks after the work, and damage to landscaping are all predictive. A single furious outlier about something unrepeatable is not.
- The dates. A company with an excellent recent record and a bad one three years ago has often changed ownership or management, and the reverse also happens.
Roofing-specific patterns
Watch for complaints that surface months after the job rather than during it. Roofing failures are seasonal — the leak appears at the first heavy rain or the first freeze — so a contractor's reviews from the winter after a busy summer are more informative than the ones posted the week the work finished.
Also asked
- Should I trust a company with only a few reviews?
- It means you have less to go on rather than that something is wrong. Weight the other checks more heavily: the license, the insurance certificate from the insurer, the written scope, the warranty terms, and two or three local jobs you can go and look at from the street.
General information about roofs and about hiring, not advice about your building. Roofing contractor licensing, permits, insurance practice and deductible rules are set state by state and province by province across the United States and Canada, so your own authority is the current answer.