Why We Do Not Knock on Your Door After a Storm

The morning after a bad hailstorm, your street fills up with trucks. Out-of-state plates. Clipboards. A knock on the door, a free inspection, and a contract that they would really like you to sign right now, today, before their crews book up.

You just watched hail beat on your house. You are rattled. You are not in a great headspace to read a contract. That is not a coincidence. That is the business model.

What a storm chaser actually is

Storm chasers follow weather. They roll into a town after a hail event, sign as many contracts as they can while people are still shaken up, subcontract the work to whoever is available, and leave. When your roof has a problem in two years, the phone number goes nowhere, because the company was never here to begin with.

The contract they hand you is often not a contract for a roof. It is a contingency agreement that assigns them your insurance claim and locks you to them for whatever the insurance company decides to pay. People sign it because it says free inspection at the top and they are too flustered to read to the bottom.

We respond fast. We do not chase.

Our trucks are minutes from most of the neighborhoods we serve, so when a storm rolls through, we are there quickly for the people who call us. But you will never see us at your front door the morning after, pushing paper at somebody who is still picking hail out of their yard.

What to do instead

• Do not sign anything the day of. Nothing about your damage gets worse because you took a day to read it.
• Ask where they are actually based. Not where the truck is from. Where the business is.
• Ask who does the work. Their crew, or whoever they can subcontract this week?
• Ask what happens in two years. If the answer is vague, that is your answer.
• Call somebody local. Even if it is not us. Somebody who has to keep living here.

Real damage will still be real damage tomorrow. Anybody who needs your signature tonight is telling you why.