After having been informed by Jeff that there was some water coming through the roof in the living room, I leapt into action. Unfortunately, as the day I found out was also Christmas, the leap I took was rather small and involved leaving messages at roofing companies I had called for estimates before. I’m not a total n00b at this process; I understand that calling anyone in the housing-materials industry is the exact equivalent of pulling out the White Pages, picking a page at random, and calling up the people on that page to say, “Hello! I have some needs to be fulfilled. I’m not too bad looking, and only have a few minor STDs, so how about if you call me back about going on a date in the next couple of days?” Assuming that you regain your sanity by the time the one callback starts happening, you will probably be thinking, “Who _is_ this person who would call me back??”
In this instance, a roof leak is not something I can play around with. So, figuring that I would need to make many many calls to get one person to actually talk to me, I started to scramble. I remembered that Sandy told me about this outfit, Angie’s List, which is supposed to be a localized Consumer Reports, by the people, for the people, rating various contractors and service providers. I bought a membership, and started going through the listings. Here’s my impressions:

  1. Grade weighting is alive and well, people. Although Angie’s List theoretically has A-F, just like in grade school, no company in the listings got below a B, and even those were few and far between. Ohhhhkay…. that’s not helpful
  2. So, I started reading the individual comments about the more popular businesses. Some of the comments are about quality of work, some are about timeliness and responsiveness, some are about price, and some are about how well the workers protected the shrubbery and cleaned up. And, it occurs to me, owning an old house that has been facelifted and remodelled many many times with varying degrees of logic, that the _last_ people I really trust in terms of judgment around home repair are other homeowners. Many times, I feel we homeowners are the problem that the house is responding to.
  3. Um, I’m sorry, but why am I paying Angie’s List when the people who are paying all the money are also the only ones who provide the value? The only value in Angie’s List is the community of paying people who will dutifully go into their reporting system and fill out forms; you cannot tell me that the system infrastructure is why I’m paying, because there are too many online free communities for various things for me to believe you. It’d be like Target having a cover charge, and then telling you that you’ll need to pitch in and stock the shelves if you want to find a shirt. hey, man, effff you!

The long and the short of it is that I made 14 phone calls, sometimes more than once, to places all highly rated in Angie’s List. I got exactly 3 callbacks; one from a company I had spent money with before, one that has not called me back despite me leaving multiple messages, and one who actually called me back, actually went to the house, actually provided an estimate, and who now is going to actually do the work because they came in 300 less than the first company. I should say, who I really hope does the work, because the beauty of contractors is that you are never actually sure until the thing is done and you get the bill, which will be 3-4 times higher than you ever thought possible. (I’m not just bitching here; the roof problem in question is flat and measures exactly 8 feet by 10 feet, and I was quoted a price of 1200 to fix it. That does not include gold-plating, champagne, a limo ride, foot massage or getting to meet anyone from the cast of Diff’rent Strokes.)

And, yes, despite my grumbling, I will be filling out forms on Angie’s List. Hey, I’m paying for it, right??!