Not everyone who knocks is a problem. The ones who are all say the same four things.
Within days of a major Calgary hailstorm, crews arrive from out of province. This is normal and largely legitimate — a storm producing 130,000 claims in a week generates work no local industry can absorb, and travelling crews are how the roofs actually get done.
The problem isn't that they travel. It's that the same conditions attract operators whose business model depends on being gone before the warranty matters. They're recognisable, because they work from a script.
Any one of these should stop the conversation.
The question isn't where they're from. It's whether they'll be reachable when something goes wrong in year three.
It deserves its own section because it's the most common offer and the most misunderstood. Your deductible is your contribution to the loss — it's the mechanism that keeps you invested in the claim being accurate. A contractor absorbing it has to recover it somewhere, and that means the invoice to your insurer overstates the work. That is a false statement to an insurer for financial gain. If it's discovered, your claim can be denied, your policy voided, and you can be personally liable — years later, when the contractor is untraceable. Anyone offering it is asking you to take a legal risk so they can win the job.
For contrast, because most of this industry is fine. A legitimate contractor will document the damage without asking you to sign anything, give you the report whether or not you hire them, wait for your adjuster rather than working around them, put the scope in writing with itemised lines, and tell you honestly if your roof doesn't have a claimable loss. That last one is the real test. A contractor who has never once told a homeowner "there's nothing here" is not inspecting roofs, they're selling them.
No. Letting someone look at your roof commits you to nothing as long as you signed nothing. If you did sign something, read it now — particularly for an assignment of benefits or a cancellation fee — and know that Alberta consumer protection law gives cancellation rights on certain direct-sales contracts within a short window.
Yes, we do canvass. So this article is partly about our own industry and partly about us, and you should hold us to every line of it. What we don't do: tell you a claim is approved, offer to cover a deductible, or ask you to sign anything on a doorstep.
Most of the time it does, and that's worth saying. The failure mode isn't usually a bad roof on day one — it's a roof with a problem in year three and nobody to call. The risk is asymmetric and it shows up late.
Alberta's Consumer Investigations Unit handles contractor conduct and prepaid contractor licensing complaints. If the issue is with how your claim was handled, that's the Alberta Insurance Council and the General Insurance OmbudService. All free to contact.
Drop your name and a way to reach you. We'll follow up with next steps — no pressure, no sales call.
