mickeyvee wrote:I was approached last weekend by a gentleman who owns a roofing & siding company. He markets it as a " Hail Restoration for roofing & siding". He said he will contact my home owner's insurance company directly and negotiate an acceptable price to have my roof "restored". The roof is 15 years old and I was considering having it replaced in the next 3-5 years anyway.
I have a few contentions:
1) What if the insurance agency will only reimburse 1/3 of the total cost? I'm not ready to commit to paying the remainder at this time. (of course, that is a contractual thing)
2) Does this really work? Is this legitimate...leveraging insurance $$ to "repair / replace" a roof?
3) Is this fraud?(am I naive?)
Never, ever let an unsolicited contractor talk with your insurance company on your behalf. Perhaps your homeowners insurance policy is unique, but I haven't seen one that covers worn out roofs.
To answer your contentions:
1) You get to decide what a new roof is worth to you.
2) This is not legitimate. It's not "leveraging" it's more like "lying".
3) If this "contractor" is going to claim that hail damage occurred and it didn't, it could easily be insurance fraud.
3b) It does indeed sound like you are naive. Or perhaps "greedy"?
Why don't you talk to your insurance agent yourself and explain the whole deal? If it's legitimate, then you might as well be transparent about the plan, right?
If you balk at talking to your agent about this, then that tells me you know the truth about what's going on here.