Home scam warning

Alabama officials are warning home owners about an Atlanta-headquartered shingle company.  This is reminscent of roofing scams that Attorney General Thurbert Baker warned DeKalb seniors about during this year's Scam Jam at the Decatur Active Living Center.  Baker said that somebody claiming to be a roofer will drop by an older person's home, tell them they have loose shingles, get up on the roof for a while without doing actual work, then come back down and demand payment. 

From WAFF News on Aug. 19:

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - During the past month, the Better Business Bureau of North Alabama has been issuing statements concerning calls to their office regarding American Shingle, a company that was headquartered in Atlanta, GA with a local office in Huntsville (American Shingle & Siding of Alabama) and more than 20 other cities.

The company's employees had been going door-to-door in several parts of North Alabama, offering to provide free roof inspections and working with the resident's insurance company to approve roofing jobs. In each call to the BBB, the homeowners who had roof damage reported that they had been asked to provide part or all of their insurance money to the company before the roof replacement job would be placed on the company's schedule.

After payment was made and the consumer waited 4-6 weeks for their new roof, as indicated by salespeople, they would receive a notice stating that the company needed to delay the roofing job by an additional 4-6 weeks, pushing some jobs into late August or even late September. Consumers began to question if the company intended to repair/replace their roof, or just keep the insurance money that had been provided.

The rest of the story is available here.  The company does not appear to have offered services to Atlanta-area residents.  However, Georgia is often ranked as one of the top 10 states for mortgage schemes and other property related fraud.