FREMONT, Mich. — A 92-year-old woman in Newaygo County paid more than $6,000 for a brand-new roof.
She and her grandson both say there are several issues with it, but every time they called the company, they were ignored.
After FOX 17 got involved it’s now a problem solved.
“The closer I got, the worse it was,” said Alan Hansen pointing out his grandmother’s roof job in Fremont. “I was thrown off by it; I’ve never seen a roof that bad.”
He walked us around the property at the end of June pointing out errors three months after it was finished.
The shingles don’t look flat. In fact, they’re bubbled and wavy.
At least one of them appears to have been left behind on the back of the home, and several are hanging over the edge and not evenly cut.
“Normally if someone’s got a nice roofing job, everything’s straight,” he said. “Everything looks good; you can’t tell. This one — you look straight down and the whole thing’s wobbly.”
Alan tells FOX 17 the contractor, William Tinges, said he’d replace the roof, but then he started ignoring his calls.
That’s when he reached out to the FOX 17 Problem Solvers.
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“My grandma doesn’t have a lot of money, you know, and I can’t fix it. I don’t have that ability to fix it, and I don’t like it when people take advantage of the elderly,” he said.
Audrey Lyons has lived in the home for more than 60 years.
She found Bill’s ad in the local paper offering lifetime asphalt shingles. It said the company was licensed and insured, providing quality work for 40 years.
She called them to check out her front porch that had been leaking.
“And so, that’s really what they come to look for, but when he looked at the rest of the house, he decided it should be replaced,” said Lyons.
She ended up with paperwork showing the job did in fact have a lifetime warranty.
She paid more than $6,700 for it.
“I live on my social security money, and I do get some retirement but that’s about it,” she said.
It bothered her too that only one guy showed up. Never a team, no Amish crew as the ad showed.
Just one man doing all the work.
After Alan pointed out the issues, he called the contractor.
“Well, my grandson called and told them what it was and that he had taken pictures and he would send them to him, and he said he didn’t want the pictures but they would replace the roof,” said Lyons. “I would get a new roof, but I haven’t heard anything from him.”
That was about two months ago.
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They said Bill told them he’d be back in a couple of weeks to fix the issue, but he never showed up or sent a crew.
“I was a little unhappy about it, but I wasn’t too sure what to do about it,” said Lyons. “And when I couldn’t get him on the telephone, that bothered me too.”
They tell FOX 17 he started ignoring their calls.
So, I let Audrey call from my phone and Bill answered.
He told her he was having problems getting people together and would send the money back if he couldn’t do it.
But a couple of weeks later she never heard back.
Turning 93 later this year, she’d hoped to finally get it fixed.
“I know that it was bad that I didn’t go out and check on it,” she said, “but with my yard being so bad and me walking with a cane, I don’t like to walk around the yard very much.”
After I reached out to Bill myself, he told me he ended up firing the guy that did the roof.
He sent the money back to Audrey, and she said the check just cleared this week.
The only problem now is she still needs someone to fix the roof.
We’ll let you know what happens with that.
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