How Do You Check a Roofer's Ratings and Reviews in Utah?

Most people check a roofing company the same way. They search the name, glance at the stars, see something in the four point range, and stop. I understand the impulse. But the star number by itself is close to the least useful thing on that page.

Here is the version that actually works, and it takes about ten minutes. Look in four places: Google, the manufacturer's contractor directory, the Better Business Bureau, and the Utah license database. Then read for patterns instead of scores. That is the whole method. The rest of this article is why each piece matters and what you are looking for once you get there.

Where a roofer's ratings actually live

• Google Business Profile. The biggest volume and the easiest to find. It is also the loosest, because anybody can leave one. Volume and recency are what make it useful, not the average.
• Manufacturer contractor directories. CertainTeed, and most of the major shingle manufacturers, publish a directory of the contractors they have credentialed. These carry ratings that come from the manufacturer's own follow-up with homeowners, not from anonymous accounts.
• The Better Business Bureau. Less about star ratings and more about complaints. What you want to see is whether complaints exist, and if they do, whether they were resolved and how.
• The Utah Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing. Not a rating at all. It is the record of whether the company is legally allowed to work on your roof. More on this below, because it is the one people skip.

None of these four tells you the whole story. Together they do.

What to read past the star count

Once you are looking at reviews, here is what I would pay attention to.

Recency. Twenty reviews from four years ago tell you about a company that may not exist in the same form today. Crews change. Ownership changes. Look at the most recent handful first.

Whether the review describes the work. A review that says the crew showed up when they said they would, tarped the landscaping, and cleaned up the nails is worth ten reviews that say great experience. Specifics mean somebody actually had a roof installed. Vagueness means somebody had a conversation.

How the company answers a bad review. This is the one I would weight highest. Every company that has been at this a while has an unhappy customer somewhere. What matters is whether the response is defensive, or whether it reads like someone trying to sort the problem out.

Local names. Reviewers who mention Layton, Kaysville, Fruit Heights, or North Ogden are telling you the company works here. A page full of reviews with no place names in them is harder to read.

Red flags in review patterns

A few things should slow you down.

Clusters of reviews posted within days of each other, especially if the company otherwise gets one or two a month. Reviews that praise a salesperson by name and never mention the roof. A rating history that is nothing but five stars going back years, which is less common than you would think for a company doing real volume. And reviews that reference work in other states, which after a hailstorm in Davis or Weber County is worth noticing.

That last one connects to something I have written about elsewhere. After a big storm, our neighborhoods fill up with outfits that were somewhere else last month and will be somewhere else next month. Their review history often gives them away before anything else does.

What a manufacturer directory tells you that reviews cannot

Anybody can create a business profile. Nobody can add themselves to a manufacturer's contractor directory. To be listed, a contractor has to be credentialed by that manufacturer, which means training, documentation, and in most programs an insurance and licensing check that gets renewed.

So a directory listing is doing two jobs at once. It is a rating, and it is proof that a third party with something to lose has already vetted the company.

We are listed in CertainTeed's contractor directory, and you can see our rating there alongside our credential. That number moves as new reviews come in, which is exactly why I would rather you go look it up than take my word for it. Search the CertainTeed contractor directory for your zip code and you will see every credentialed contractor in the area with their ratings side by side. Do that before you call anyone, including us.

What to do with what you find

Ratings and reviews are a filter, not a decision. Their job is to get you from a list of ten companies down to two or three worth having a real conversation with. The decision itself happens when somebody is standing on your roof telling you what they see.

So bring what you found into that conversation. If you saw a one star review from last spring, ask about it. A company that handles that question straight is telling you something useful. A company that gets prickly about it is telling you something too.

I have been doing this along the Wasatch Front for nearly 40 years, and I would rather you check on us thoroughly and call with hard questions than call because we came up first in a search. An informed homeowner is easier to work with, not harder.