Okay, so it’s the Independent & Free Press of Halton Hills, and it’s hardly newsworthy, but there it is. She’s been having a hell of a time trying to get a contractor or roofer out to fix her leaky roof, having called half a metric ton of them, all of whom either won’t return her calls/E-Mails or won’t come out to price “such a small job.” It’s not like she lives way out in the middle of a freakin’ lake or something. Her house is roughly sixty seconds down 8th line, right off Steeles Ave., a major thoroughfare. The area is distinctly rural-looking but since it’s really only spitting distance from suburbia proper I don’t see why it’s such a big deal for these companies.
I’m sorry for your mother-in-law’s troubles – I’ve been there myself.
But that story reads an awful lot like an Onion article. 
My sister, who lives in Acton (also part of Halton Hills), spent several years trying to find a roofer to re-shingle her roof.
The worst part of it was when one took a $10,000.00 deposit and fled the country.
Yeah, I know, it looks like a clipping from The Bumpkin Times where the editorials are done by the mayor/sherrif/editor-in-chief, but then articles like that don’t usually show up in larger papers, and it doesn’t even warrant a human interest piece on a consumer watchdog segment of the nightly news, but she’s pretty happy she made the news at all. 
Yowch. That’s just crappy. She must have had a lot of work required for a $10k deposit to be needed. Or the roofer just inflated the estimate so he could take off with the cash. (And come on, $10k? That’s not even worth fleeing the city for.)
Even if the fellow had done the work, at $10,000.00 she would have been hosed. Her house is one of those nice old places by the pond in Acton – I don’t recall the dimensions, but my best guess is that the roof surface is under 1500 sq ft, so 10K was way out of line.
We have a rather obsessive cousin in the Mississauga and Hwy10 area who took up trying to find the roofer for a couple of years, and was was successful in that he did get a couple of contacts for him, but ultimately the trail led south of the border. The contacts (who were also chasing him for similar frauds) indicated that the fellow was broke, so my sister did not pursue it further (e.g. didn’t put in the time to get a judgement against him).
At the time, (she’ now retired), she was the comptroller for Magna’s Karmax plant in Milton, and putting in killer hours at work, so her focus was on her job rather than on her roof when she paid the roofer the deposit that far exceeded what the entire job should have cost. Previously she had had a addition built (by an different contractor) where everything went smoothly, so she made a very mistaken assumption that things would be the same for the roofer.
At the time in my own community (TBay), I was handling a couple of matters concerning roofers. In one, the roofer took a deposit but did not do the work. In the other, a community group advertised for bids to have their roof built, but only one roofer submitted a bit. The group turned down the bid, waited a few months, and asked for another round of bids. This second time around two other roofer made bids, one 42K less than the first round’s single bid, and the other 38K less than the first round’s single bid. That’s when the first round’s single bidder sued, claiming that the community group was obligated to accept its first bid. While this was going on, I checked the list of who had issued claims locally in the last few years. The roofer who was suing the community group was on that list repeatedly, so I then looked at the claims. From what I saw, that roofer was in the business of making rediculously high bids on jobs on the assumption that it would be the only bidder on some of those jobs. Then, if there were no other bidders, it would sue, claiming that by virtue of having been the only bidder, it must then have the contract. Needless to say, when I spoke to the roofer about this, the matter settled quickly.
At the same time, another lawyer in town was being sued by a roofer who fell of his roof, despite the roofer having taken on the contract as the general contractor rather than the owner also being the general.
All in all, it’s left me wondering “what’s the deal with roofers?” I know that if I ever need roof work done, I’ll simply pay the extra and go through a reputable general contractor (we represent a few of them), and insist on the general posting a performance bond.
Jeez. I guess it all comes down to the same thing: Caveat Emptor. Especially when it comes to general contractors, mechanics and such. Sometimes even reputable companies can’t always be trusted. I recently saw a series of reports on a large auto mechanic chain that was being investigated for charging the customer for work they never actually performed, as well as giving them the usual round of BS about needing repairs or filter changes that weren’t necessary. I guess you have to do a little gumshoe work when you want to hire someone for an expensive job, and even when you hire them you have to keep an eye on them to make sure the work is done properly.
To update the situation in my original post, though: Seems the article generated a considerable amount of interest all of a sudden from various roofers and contractors, and as I type this she is now getting her roof repaired – pro bono. Cool!