roofing warranty question

It looks like I have the defective Certanteed shingles on my house but yet to be confirmed. They were installed 9 years ago, the contractor that installed them had a 10 year labor and a 25 year shingle warranty. There is not much more wording than that on the paperwork. At this point in the game how much is the contractor liable for?

There is also a class action settlement that I could get but it looks like with the prorating I wouldn’t end up with much (still need to get the details on this).

I contacted the contrator today and he didn’t sound to thrilled to deal with it but said he would send one of his guys over to look at it and get back to me.

Without having more wording to define the “ifs”, you could end up with a lot of grief. The contractor’s argument is very simple. His workmanship is fine and the shingles were installed to the manufacture’s specifications. The shingles are covered by the manufacture’s warranty and very seldom covers any labor. Never hurts to ask the questions though, you may have worked with a contractor that has a very high level of pride in customer satisfaction. He may offer to split the labor cost with you

I built a new house 5 years ago with Certanteed shingles that had defects in them. I had to file a claim and send in 3 full shingles for them to look at. They denied the claim so I kept calling explaining the problem with them that I circled with a bright marker. After a bunch of run around they selled with me. I also had to opt out of the class action settlement. They and every one else in the world knows the Horizon line is garbage. That is why they do not make it anymore.

I’m going through the same problem with a ten year old home that I’m buying that has CertainTeed shingles. I talked to my son-in-law who is in the lumber business the other night about the class action lawsuit and he said that he recently sent a claim form in for his parents twelve year old roof and they got a check back for $1200. Definitely worth the effort to fill out the claim form and send it in.

http://www.certainteedshinglesettlement.com/index.cfm

Who was the contractor?

My question would be, who picked out the shingles ? If it was the homeowner, they own them. If you hired a contractor & said I want Weatherwood, with a 25 year warranty on the shingle and he put 10 years on the install, then I would expect something from the contractor. Like mentioned, fill out the form

How do you know if you have em? I bought my house in 08 and the detached garage’s shingles are junk and I suspect that these shingles are on it. Had a neighbor tell me that they were less than 10 yrs old. I would assume you have to prove that they in fact the certanteed brand.

The contractor is only responsible for his labor unless he put in writing a material warranty for ten years. Who would be that stupid? If his workmanship did not cause any damage to your home or the shingles, he is free and clear.
Personally I would help you get your claim with certainteed though because we still believe in customer service after the sale. Some people just want your money, I want your referal, too. Sounds like your contractor doesn’t want to work for you again.
Certainteed products are all garbage. They will probably try give you merchandise credit for 2/3 of the what materials cost nine years ago. Or give you more of their junk products as a replacement. Maybe they will offer a cash settlement. Their Fiber cement siding is absolute crap, I’m working on getting three of our past customers home resided at certainteed expense. I hope you are a patient man because Certainteed will drag their feet each inch of the way.

Did everything Certainteed wanted 3 years ago and got absolutly nothing from them. They make you jump through about a dozen hoops and you get the big one stuck up your ???. Just my 2cents.

I would think any contractor worth his salt, would choose good materials. If I as a homeowner, use your services, right down to choosing the product used, then if there is a problem with the product you chose to use, I then expect your “help” in submitting any warranty requests and so forth. If that is too much to ask, I would definitely be looking at another contractor next time.

I run a crane for a commercial roofing company so we don’t deal too much with shingles. But I do know a bit about this problem! Back about I wanna say 12-13 years ago Certainteed made over 1 million PALLETS of defective shingles and tried to pull as many of them as possible at the time. When they did this there were warehouses and yards full of these “defective shingles” and eventually contractors started buying them for a fraction of the cost, not thinking of the consequences later… Or not being informed that they were bad shingles. It is not the contractors fault unless you can prove that they knew that you were buying bad shingles (which you won’t be able to prove).

But on a good note the manufacter is very well aware of the problem, and the shingles are very easy to spot. No shingle thats 15 years old or less should have curling edges, and be losing all of the granules. Obviously they are gonna hope that if they don’t cooperate that most people will just move on and hopefully be able to claim them on insurance from “storm damage”. But if you stay on them and possibly even get in touch with an attorney and just get some insight and a name to refer to while contacting them it might go a long way!! I know our townhome complex (18 buildings) that are only 11 years old had ALL bad shingles, and it took them over 2 years but they won the lawsuit against the shingle company, and even won against the contracting company! Just my 2cents, but I would stay on them!

I have those freaking shingles on my house too (about 10 years old). I bought the house when it was about 4 years old. Planning to replace them this spring. I would guess 70% of the houses in my sub division have the same shingles. Over the past couple years there have been and average of 3 roofing contractors replacing roofs at any one time. I stopped and talked to one of the contractors last fall. They looked at my roof and convinced me to try and claim the damage was storm damage. Some insurance companies have been replacing the roofs due to hail damage. The benefit to doing this is they will cover both material and labor to replace verses only a prorated portion of the materials if you go the class action settlement route. Of course my insurance company denied the claim. I don’t blame them. They are defective shingles. I’m in the process of filling out the claim form now. I haven’t shopped for new shingles yet, but I can guarantee you that I won’t put certainteed on again – ever. What good is a 25 year warranty if they only cover about 1200.00 of an 8500.00 replacement cost 10 years into the warranty? I could buy 2 new Terovas and a couple side imaging Lowrances with the money I have to spend on replacing my roof.

I would also recommend getting multiple estimates for replacing your roof. My first estimate (from the contractor that told me to claim it as hail damage) was 3 – 4 thousand dollars more than what my brother in-law normally charges for roof work.

FYI: Just a quick heads up CertainTeed will prorate your warranty if you purchased a house with the shingles on them already. I purchased a turnkey home about 10 years ago to later find out it had defective shingles. CertainTeed gave me $250 for a $8000 reshingle job. I called and called and complained, they didn’t seem to care one bit.

Go to the Certainteed class action website, it explains everything. The application form is 8 pages long. Plan on spending an entire Saturday gathering up the necessary documents,taking the required photos, removing and replacing a sample shingle, and the packaging it up for shipment. Shingle receipt, installation receipt, building permit, home owners insurance policy, 2 photos of every roof plane, photos of roof venting, whole house photos, street view photo, etc. etc. The sample shingle has to be shipped flat, no folding allowwed. No e-mailing the photos, must be printed or on a CD disk with the sample shingle. I had 30 squares and received $1300. They pro-rate it against $74/square. So for 13 year old 30 year warranty shingles you get 17/30 of $74/square. If less than 10 years old its a different formula. I believe these were sold from 1985 thru 2005. My south facing shingles were brittle, losing the grit and curled like a potato chip, the north side still looked fine.

I too have the bad shingles on both the house and garage. I filled out the forms and sent in two shingles and the pictures and forms they require and had two checks in my hand within 3 weeks. I helped a friend a year ago send one in and she got her check within 3 months. Yes it is pro rated based on length of use. But I installed my own shingles 15 years ago and what I got back was pretty close to the price I paid for them. The class action web site has a calculator that will tell you what your refund will be. Hard to find many companies that will pay for labor costs with a defective product. Sure it ticks you off to spend money for something you thought would last longer. Who said life is fair.

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Who said life is fair.

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I’ve been telling my daughters lately that the only thing in life that is fair, is in the fall and they sell corn dogs. I think they are getting sick of my using that line.

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Who said life is fair.

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Their supposed warranty did….

I haven’t read much on their web site yet but I assume if you take their payment that is their warranty. Is this different than if the shingles would have failed for something else or was the lawsuit just so they stood behind their warranty? Either way this sucks and looks like it’s going to cost me.

I wasted hours and hours on this with defective curling Organic shingles. I replaced with Owens Corning 30 years last year and I imagine they will not curl after 10 years.

Mike,
I’m having my new roof put on today. I went the class action route with my shingles. It took me about a week to gather all the information to fill out the Class Action Claim form. I sent in the shingle and form. I called Certainteed after they signed for the package. They indicated it would be 3 – 5 weeks before the claim would be processed. I got a check from them a week later. One check was for 50.00 (for pulling the shingle sample) and another check for 1498.00. My roof was 11 years old (32 square) and I was not the original owner. I believe that affects the amount of reimbursement. I also don’t know what brand of Certainteed shingles I had and how long of a warranty they carried. The amount is more than I would have guessed, but it still stinks to have to spend about 6500 more to replace a 10 year old roof. Thought you might me interested in how this turned out.

Thanks for posting Kirk, I’m going to have to do this as well. As I figured the original roofer isn’t interested in helping out, I haven’t heard anything back from them. They were all interested until they found out it was a job that they did and it should be covered under their warranty, JTR out of Stillwater.

Everyone in my neighborhood got new shingles from their insurance companies. No problem. We had to reference one storm date but the defective shingles were really to blame.
I put it off for a long time until my insurance man talked me into it. I did however save my insurance company some money by playing hardball with the roofer. The least I could do.