Follow up to company response:
Intact: We did five houses on the street this house being a semi detached house who's neighbour previously had issues with squirrels.
>>This is completely irrelevant – yes, there were/are squirrels in the area and the fact that our neighbour had issues many years ago does not in any way change the fact that despite never having issues with squirrels in OUR attic, 1 week after we had our roof done, we had squirrels enter our attic through the gaping space left when the soffit was not properly put back.
Intact: After removing their shingles we noticed signs of animal damage and notified the homeowner who disregard this.
>>This is not true. They never spoke to us about anything of the sort (in fact, we weren’t even home when they did most of the work) – had they informed us that there were signs of animals entering our attic or signs of animal damage, we most certainly would not have disregarded such information - we would have called Gates immediately as we did once we started hearing the noises from the attic. I can assure the HomeStars community that we had no squirrels in our attic prior to this. I work from home regularly and I heard the scratching start about a week after the new roof was installed. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there was a connection between the 2 things.
Intact: We did offer to put up protective screening at no cost which they declined.
>>They offered to come and “seal the gaps” but refused to cover the actual cost of the mistake. Had we accepted their offer, their actions would have trapped the squirrels in our attic which would have led to them causing more damage as they tried to escape….
Intact: After meeting animal removal service on site they had determined that a squirrel ,not an infestation ,had made a hole in The soffit board in the eavestrough which had nothing to do with the roof work.
>>?? There were actually 4 squirrels. Gates removal services went up and closely inspected the issue and it was Gates that took the pictures and told us that it appeared that the roofers had failed to pull the soffit back down after they installed the shingles in that section. There was never any suggestion that this was done maliciously – we understood that mistakes happen but unfortunately, this mistake was expensive for us. We would have even been happy if Intact had offered to pay even half the cost of the removal and fix but instead, they chose to act as if they did nothing wrong. I now find out that they followed up many months later on this review (I only saw the follow up recently) to post untruths about the situation to make themselves look better.
The picture posted with this review is the one provided to us by Gates – there is no “hole” in the soffit just a gaping space underneath the metal where the squirrels could easily access the attic.
Intact: unfortunately the homeowner left out these details and also the picture of the hole in the facia board.
>>I left out no details and I have no idea what "picture of the hole in the fascia board" he is talking about. As I said in my first post - Shawn informed my husband that he would take no responsibility for covering the cost of getting rid of the squirrels and he said he wasn't interested in seeing any pictures when we offered to provide them and there was definitely no picture of a board with a hole in it.
Intact: There was no lawsuit just threats which we at Intact roofing do not take lightly nor should anybody.
>>We explored the legal option and determined that it would cost us more to fight this than we paid for the fix and so we didn’t pursue it any further.
Original Review
Shortly after having our roof replaced by Intact (approximately a month ago), we started hearing scratching coming from the attic. It wasn't constant but it seemed to be getting worse so we decided to call a wildlife elimination company to come and check things out. The guy went up and found the problem immediately (see attached photo - if you look carefully, you can even see a bit of the pink insulation). He came down and said that it looked as though roofers had pushed up the soffit to install shingles and forgot to pull it back down. Given that we had the roof replaced a month ago and that's when the noise started, this seems like an almost certainty.
The wildlife elimination company knows that we are going to pay to get the problem sorted out no matter what so they had no reason to blame roofers without cause.
My husband called our contact with Intact (Shawn) to explain the problem and offered to send the pictures so he could see the situation because it seemed quite clear to the pest control company, myself and my husband that this was negligence on the part of the roofer but Shawn informed my husband that he would take no responsibility for covering the cost of getting rid of the squirrels and he said he wasn't interested in seeing any pictures. He then claimed (without seeing any pictures) that gaps were NORMAL but he said he would be happy to come out and “seal the gaps” but again, he wouldn't pay for the animal removal. The problem is (and anyone in his business should know this), patching it without removing the animals that entered because of his crew's negligence will result in the animals getting TRAPPED and either burrowing their way into our house or causing dangerous damage such as chewed wires that can short and cause a house fire!
I told the pest control rep what Shawn had said and his response was an incredulous "is your roofer for real"?
So, while we had no issues up to this point and Shawn seemed quite pleasant and came recommended by a neighbour, the unwillingness to even consider that this might be the fault of his crew and that this might be his responsibility to fix is a deal breaker and deserves a warning to anyone thinking about hiring this company to do their roof.
I highly recommend finding a company with more than 2 reviews on HomeStars and a real online presence. I went against my instincts out of respect for a neighbour and I learned my lesson the hard way.
The squirrel removal and hole fixes cost $500. We will most likely be speaking with our lawyer to see if it is worth our while to sue Intact to get our $500 back since this isn't exactly a cost we expected to incur one month after having our roof replaced given that in the 11 years we have lived in this house, we have NEVER had any critters in our attic.
I understand that mistakes happen - we are all human but to refuse to accept responsibility and make amends when you make a mistake is pretty despicable.
Rebecca Whiteside, P. Eng.
