When a roofing job goes wrong, what happens next matters

James Logan, founder and CEO, Roofbuddy

The Herald published a story this morning about a homeowner whose new roof leaks. The roofing work on that house was poor. We have apologised to the homeowner, and we are replacing her roof at our cost. Getting her a proper roof is what matters now.

There is also a broader issue worth talking about: what happens in New Zealand when a roofing job goes wrong, why we built Roofbuddy the way we did, and what any homeowner can do to protect themselves before the first sheet comes off.

Anyone can re-roof your house. Legally.

Replacing an old roof with comparable materials is not restricted building work. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment confirmed that in this morning's article. No licence or qualification is required. A person can register a company on Monday, or simply trade under their own name, build a website on Tuesday, take a deposit on Wednesday and be standing on your roof by Friday and nothing in New Zealand law stops them.

Roofing is one of the biggest and highest-risk decisions a homeowner makes and one of the least protected. I have put the case for a licensing requirement for re-roofing to the Minister for Building and Construction and to the Roofing Association of New Zealand, and I will keep making it.

Until the law changes, the protections a homeowner gets are the protections somebody builds for them. That is what Roofbuddy is, and it is why we wrote the handbook.

The handbook

Last year I wrote the Purchasing Guide to Roofing, ten and a half thousand words covering the whole process from pre-purchase to completion to what to do if it goes wrong: how to check qualifications and licensing, how to read a quote, how to confirm public liability insurance, what deposit structure to accept, how contract works insurance operates, when to get an independent inspection, and what your rights are under the Consumer Guarantees Act if the roofer won't come back. It is free, it is on our website for anyone to read whether they use Roofbuddy or not, and we leave a printed copy with every homeowner we visit.

I wrote it because most people re-roof a house once or twice in their lives and go into it knowing nothing, against a tradesperson who does it every week. That imbalance is the whole problem. Every step that went wrong in this morning's story has a chapter in that guide, written before the story happened. If you are about to re-roof, read it cover to cover. If you're mid-job and something feels off, the index will take you to the page you need. Keep it close at hand.

What Roofbuddy does

Roofbuddy is a marketplace. Homeowners post a job; roofing businesses quote on it; the homeowner compares and chooses on merit. Getting multiple comparable, competitive quotes in New Zealand can otherwise take weeks of chasing and a homeowner who only ever sees one price has no way of knowing whether it's fair.

The contract for the work sits between the homeowner and the roofing business, exactly as it would if they had found each other directly. The difference is everything we put around that contract. We check service providers before they can quote and monitor how they perform once they are quoting. We act as an intermediary when a dispute arises between a homeowner and a roofer. And where a roofing business fails to start or finish a job, we stand behind the outcome.

How roofers get on, and how they stay

Before a roofing service provider can quote on the marketplace we check its current public liability insurance, its trading history, its reference sites and completed jobs, and its existing track record and reviews. Since October 2024, a Licensed Building Practitioner in the business, held by the owner or a staff member and verified against the MBIE public register, has been a condition of joining.

Once a service provider is quoting, we watch how it performs. Homeowners leave verified reviews that other customers see before they choose, and that record sits on each roofer's profile alongside the number of jobs completed through Roofbuddy. Businesses that fail to meet their obligations to customers are removed from the marketplace.

None of these checks is required of anyone in the sector. We do them because the protections do not otherwise exist.

The quality assurance check

The single most important step in any re-roofing job is an independent inspection before final payment. Faults are often invisible from the ground, and once final payment is made and the work accepted, a homeowner's position is much weaker. The guide has a chapter on this and it is the one I'd read twice.

When the work is complete, a Roofbuddy customer can opt for a quality assurance check. An independent trade-qualified roofer inspects the installation against the building code and the manufacturer's specifications and provides a full report with photographs before you make final payment. It costs $299 including GST for marketplace customers, and it is the single best decision a homeowner can make on a roofing job. It catches problems while the money is still in your account; accountability is baked in at this point.

I would recommend every homeowner has an independent check done before final payment, whether they use Roofbuddy or not.

When something goes wrong

Most problems on a roofing job are resolved between the homeowner and the roofer. Where that stalls, we act as an intermediary: we work with both parties to establish what is outstanding and to get the job finished properly.

Sometimes a roofing business collapses, disappears or walks away mid-job. Across close to 5,000 jobs on the marketplace there have been 38 of these. In every one, Roofbuddy completed the roof, refunded the money or funded a fair resolution at our own cost. Five jobs finished after a roofer was lost at sea. Seven jobs taken over by deed when a company folded. Full refunds where deposits had been paid and no work started. Second roofs where the first attempt failed. Problems like these can happen in roofing. One of the protections Roofbuddy adds is that when they do, we're there to help work through the problem and towards a fair resolution for the homeowner. None of those businesses trades on our marketplace today.

One of those homeowners, David in Ngaio, told the Herald what that looked like from his side. A roofer took his deposit and vanished. We finished his roof. He is on a pension. That is the mechanism, and it is the reason the company exists.

The Customer Warranty

Where a roofing business fails to start or finish the work, our Customer Warranty is designed to cover the outcome, up to $50,000. It covers a roofer failing to start or finish, not defects in work that has been completed and accepted. Eligibility conditions include keeping to the payment schedule in your roofing contract and not having made final payment to a roofer who has defaulted. I'd encourage anyone using the marketplace to read them before the job starts rather than after.

What we have changed

Vetting is only as good as the protections built around it, and we have learned that the hard way. Over the last year:

• Quality assurance inspections have moved to an independent third party.
• A dedicated customer service role now supports homeowners and roofers through fulfilment issues.
• Verified homeowner reviews are visible on roofer profiles before a customer proceeds.
• Licence checks continue after onboarding where the licence in a business is held by a staff member rather than the owner.
• This week we reviewed every page of our website against one principle: describe only what we do. Where a sentence could be read as promising more than we deliver, it has been rewritten.

What I'd ask of homeowners

If you're re-roofing, three things, and the guide covers each in detail. Get more than one quote. Ask who holds the licence in the business you're hiring and check the register. And whoever you use, have the finished work inspected by someone independent before you pay the final invoice. If you use Roofbuddy, that inspection is a click away.

Where we stand

We are not going to claim that every job goes perfectly. Across close to 5,000 jobs, some haven't. What matters is what happens when they don't. When something goes wrong on our marketplace, someone answers the phone, and we work to put it right.

This morning's story is about a roof that went wrong. The rest of the story is what happens next and what we learn from it.

Read the full article: NZHerald.