Last year I started the process of getting solar panels installed on my house - I'd actually initiated that process in early 2020 but the COVID pandemic along with some other factors led me to leave that hanging. This was probably for the best also since my electricity usage footprint is likely to have grown since then given an installation of a heat pump since then and I should be getting an electric vehicle in a few months.
The first stage was to get a new roof installed - my house had a few years left in the roof, but not enough that would justify having to pay extra to have the panels removed for the sake of that; there's also a barn behind my house which was desperately in need of a new roof as shingles would fall of (some contractor or other referred to it as "potato chips"), and many/most of the panels are expected to be on the barn.
I ended up using Care Free Homes out of Fairhaven, MA to do the roof replacement (after a delay in hearing back from someone else). Superficially the root replacement seemed to go smoothly and on budget, but as the work was still underway there was a day where it started raining…inside my kitchen. I raised this to the sales rep who was rudely dismissive saying something to the effect that "we wouldn't have had anything to do with that" as though my new internal water feature was something that was not something I had requested and therefore was clearly unrelated. Certainly the fact there was no leak before the work was done and now there was a fairly massive one suggested to me that coincidence was highly unlikely (and based on personal experience on both sides of such situations). From the perspective of a customer who considers one of the primary functions of a roof to be to keep water out of my house, this new behavior was certainly not something I would look for in a roofing company. As a disclaimer I was also not being aggressive throughout the process (where this posting is the snarkiest I've been) - especially at the outset I figured it may have been a simple fix and was therefore just looking to have it taken care of (when it first happened I suggested it may have just been a side effect of some of their equipment that was set up at the time to try to emphasize that there may be a problem and that I wasn't blaming or being difficult and simply wanted to make sure that rain stayed on the outside).
After far too much conversation Care Free first suggested that the problem was related to the need for repainting around a frieze board and that the water was getting in behind that. I found that highly unlikely since I would hope that more would be holding my house together and if that type of issue were to occur it seemed like it would most plausibly be gradual (rather than immediately going from no leak to a stream). Given that the trim could use a touch up in any case, I had that done (not through the same company - they don't do that and in any case I not have gone that route). Unsurprisingly this did not resolve the issue.
After another somewhat annoying conversation to the tune of "my roof still leaks"…"huh? oh you're still complaining about that? okay, fine, we'll take a look at some point" - they sent someone over. This time I also took some video of water pouring through between the gutter and the fascia and this time they came back with the very different diagnosis that the gutter was rotten and needs to be replaced and they gave me an estimate. In the interest of getting it resolved agreed after getting further attitude from the rep when I asked if wood fascia was an option instead of some kind of Koma/PVC ("I don't know why you'd want to do that").
I hadn't heard back from them (allowing for a bit of time for a holiday gap) and so instead contacted someone else who just came and looked at it. Their diagnosis (which was actually driven by using a bucket of water to see what happens rather than just what seemed to be looking around and trying to find anything convenient to blame) was that the flashing was not done properly for the gutter - which certainly confirms what I'd been thinking and requesting be checked at prior checks (I honestly have done some roofing in the distant past but I'm not going to pretend any insight I had was based on more than what has happening and some Internet searching). Hopefully this should finally be fixed this week (the work being done is ultimately not that different as a wider gutter will be installed along with replacement down spouts but so far it's promising to be a far better overall experience).
Apparently a joke I've repeated is that Care Free Homes would be better named Care Less Homes. The rep in particular seemed to be very keen for me to pay my balance while I continued to have issues and otherwise seemed to be rude, and the overall notion that they left a customer with a new leak and didn't seem compelled to address that promptly is a bit disturbing. Overall they are likely the type of company that does one very specific thing and is not helpful for anything outside of that focus, even in cases where it is intricately linked and prospectively their fault (i.e. selling and installing roofing materials but not being equipped to deal with any non-trivial issue). Certainly not a company I'll be doing business with again.
My sister also mentioned that there's the prospect of holding back some amount of the overall payment for a period to allow time for issues to surface (I delayed payment briefly but provided it after there were no obvious reasons though I should have gotten additional input…I think I did not have the energy at the time to do more); I'll certainly look into this next time I have a large project with an untrusted vendor.