Strip the Pitch From Each Roofer's Answer Before You Score It

A roofing reply usually arrives as one paragraph. It opens with the company's background, moves to a line about quality, and somewhere in the middle it answers the question you asked. Before you put two replies side by side, pull the answer out of the wrapping so you can see what was actually said. This page walks through one way to do that for a homeowner in St. Louis County who has three or four roofers in play and a decision still ahead.

Sort each sentence into one of three bins

Take a reply and read it one sentence at a time. Put each sentence in one of three bins: a fact about your roof or your job, a promise about what will happen, or a feeling about the company. A fact names something you can check, such as a shingle product line, a count of squares, a day of the week a crew starts, or a phone number that someone answers. A promise names a future action and who owns it. A feeling says the crew is careful, the team cares, or the work is excellent. Feelings are not useless, but they cannot be scored against a second roofer, so they go in the third bin and stay there.

Many replies that look complete hold only one or two facts once they are sorted. Suppose your question was how the crew protects the gutters during tear-off. If the reply spends four sentences on craftsmanship before saying the crew "takes care of everything," then the answer is that last phrase, and it has no detail behind it. Write that down as a gap, not as a yes.

Keep the fact bin separate from the price

The pitch often sits closest to the number. A reply may say the price reflects premium materials, a long crew history, or an approach that keeps the house dry, and then give a total. Compare the total only after you have listed the facts that produced it. If one roofer quotes a higher total and names a specific underlayment, a membrane width at the eave, and a count of pipe boots, while another quotes lower with only the word "complete," the two totals are not yet comparable. The fact bin is where you find out whether they are the same roof.

This is also where a St. Louis homeowner should check for the local hazards that matter most. A reply that never mentions how the crew handles a cold morning after a freeze, or what happens when rain stops work for a full day in April, has left out a fact that will matter once the job is underway. Treat that as a fact gap and ask it as a question in writing.

Find the number hidden in a promise

Promises can carry costs. "We will clean up completely" is a promise, and its cost depends on what the cleanup includes: a magnet sweep of the lawn, dumpster placement, hauling away the old shingles, and a final nail sweep of the driveway. Ask the roofer to turn the promise into a task list. Each task then becomes a fact you can compare. Two roofers who both promise cleanup may list very different tasks, and only the list tells you which bid includes the work.

The same goes for timing. "We start soon" is a promise without a date. "We start the week the permit is pulled, and we call you the day before" is a fact with an owner. Note which replies give you a date and who is responsible for making it happen. A date with no owner is still a promise, and it belongs in the second bin.

Tear-off questions deserve the same treatment. A reply should say whether the old layers come off or the new roof goes over them, how many layers the roofer expects to find, and what happens to the deck if soft spots show up once the shingles are gone. A reply that answers only the first part has given you one fact out of three.

Score only the facts, one row per question

Build a simple grid. Put your questions down the left side and roofers across the top. In each cell, write the fact the roofer gave, or the word "none" if the reply held no fact on that question. Do not write "good" or "strong" in any cell. A cell that says "none" is informative, because it tells you the roofer did not answer the question you asked. A cell that says "fact given, not checked" is still better than a cell with a feeling in it, because you can check it later.

Once the grid is full, count the empty cells for each roofer. A roofer with several empty cells has answered a different question than the one you asked. You are not required to drop that roofer, but you should ask the empty questions again, in writing, and note the date of your request and the date of the reply. Over a few weeks, the dates alone will tell you how quickly each company responds.

When the reply is all pitch

Some replies arrive with almost no facts. A roofer may answer a question about nail pattern with a paragraph about years in the trade and a request to schedule a visit. That is a reply, but it is not an answer. Send the same question again in a shorter form, and say you need the answer before you can compare bids. Keep the first reply and the second reply together in one folder so the timing and the content are both on record.

If you would rather have these questions answered on the roof than in an email, you can call Keys Roofing at (314) 220-2333 and ask for the same list of facts before a visit. The principle is the same from either side of the table: a fact can be checked, and a feeling cannot.

What to write down before the next call

Before you talk to the next roofer, write three lines for each roofer you have already heard from. First, the one fact you still lack. Second, the sentence that surprised you most, whether good or bad. Third, the date of the next step each roofer promised. These three lines keep the comparison about what each company actually said, and they keep your attention on the work that will go on your roof rather than on whichever company sounded most confident on the phone.