Ask Each Roofer to Explain Your Bid Back to You in Their Own Words

A roofer can read your bid aloud and still not know what it says. The test in this piece is simple: ask each roofer to explain the bid back to you, in their own words, and then compare what they say against what is on paper. A roof bid in St. Louis usually runs several pages of line items, allowances and exclusions, and the decisions that matter often sit in a few lines. If the explanation from one company matches the document and the explanation from another drifts, you have learned something that no price comparison will show you.

Why a read-back beats a read-through

Reading a bid silently tells you what the document says. Having the roofer restate it tells you whether the person who wrote or sold the number understands the roof it describes. Those are different skills. A salesperson can know the price cold and still not be sure whether the tear-off includes the chimney flashing, or whether the decking allowance is billed per sheet or per square. Asking for the explanation out loud forces the answer to come from the person who will send the crew.

The request also puts the burden where it belongs. You are not asking the roofer to prove the bid is correct. You are asking them to show you the roof they plan to build, slope by slope, using the same words you will later hold them to.

Set up the request so the answers can be compared

Give every roofer the same three prompts, in the same order, and write down each answer as it comes. Keep the prompts short so the roofer has room to talk. A useful set:

1. Walk me through the roof from the eave up, and name each material you will install in that order.
2. Which lines in this bid are fixed, and which are allowances or unit prices that could move?
3. What is not included that a homeowner might assume is included?

Write the answers in columns, one column per roofer, with the same rows down the side: eave, underlayment, valleys, penetrations, ridge, cleanup, and open items. Empty cells are data too. If one roofer cannot name the underlayment on the first try, note that next to the cell and move on. The point of the grid is to put four explanations side by side so the gaps show.

Do this on one call or one visit per roofer, and do not share the other roofers' bids while you do it. You want each answer given cold, not revised to match a competitor's number.

What a useful explanation sounds like in St. Louis

A roofer who understands your house will tie the explanation to the things that actually fail here. Ask about the freeze and thaw cycle, because a bid that calls for starter strip and ice and water membrane only at the eave is answering a different question than one that runs the membrane up the valleys and around the penetrations. Ask about ice damming on the north side of the house, since the answer should say how far up the deck the membrane goes. Ask what happens to the old shingles, because the answer should match the rules where the house sits. The permit desks across St. Louis County set their own rules for street use, dumpsters and staging, and a roofer who knows the job will name them.

Specifics in the answer are the signal. We will do it right is not an explanation. We run the underlayment up the slope, lap each course, and nail the drip edge before the first course of shingles is an explanation.

Where explanations usually drift

When you compare the read-backs, look for these three places where answers tend to diverge:

• Allowances. A roofer who calls the decking an allowance should be able to say what the allowance covers, what it does not, and who signs off before it is spent.
• Counts. Ask how many squares they measured and how many layers they expect to remove. If the numbers in the explanation differ from the bid, one of them is wrong.
• Sequence. Ask what happens if rain arrives on day two. A roofer who knows the job will describe the tarp, the stop point and the restart. One who does not will describe the schedule.

Each drift is a question to write down, not a reason to discard the bid by itself. Some drift is honest disagreement about method. Some is a bid that was priced from a template and never walked. You will know which after you have written the answer down and asked for the same answer in writing.

Put the explanation on paper before you sign

A spoken explanation is useful for comparison, but it does not bind anyone. Once a roofer has explained the bid, ask for a short written version that matches the explanation line for line. Keys puts a written scope with photos and measurements in the homeowner's hands, and that is the document to check against your notes. If a roofer will not put the explanation in writing, that is a finding, and it belongs in the same column as everything else.

Keep the notes with the bids. If a question comes up after the crew starts, the dated read-back is the record of what each roofer said the roof would be.

What the read-back does not settle

A read-back does not tell you whether a roofer is licensed, insured or reliable. Missouri does not license roofers at the state level, so a verbal explanation cannot stand in for a check of local registration or a certificate of insurance. Those are separate questions with separate paperwork. This method only tests whether the bid and the person behind it describe the same roof.

The read-back also has a boundary. RSMo 407.725 forbids a roofing contractor from representing or negotiating a homeowner's insurance claim, so if a roofer's explanation drifts into how an insurer will pay, that question belongs with the homeowner and their own insurer, not the contractor.

If you want to talk through the read-back with someone at Keys, the office number is (314) 220-2333. Ask the same three questions you asked the other roofers, and compare the answers the same way.