What Should I Expect After A Hail Storm?

Here is a list of everything else you should know; how to deal with things, and what to expect. The severity of these things will depend on the size of the storm and your location.

• Things you’ll see at home: Over the next several months, you will most likely have dozens of door hangers, mailers, calls, and knocks at the door with people soliciting to repair your home. Some will be legitimate professional companies who are marketing the storm, while others, and the majority, will be broke storm chasers from other cities, janitors, bartenders, mechanics, painters, and people from all other professions who are getting into construction as a way to cash in on the storm. The best thing to do to avoid this is to put a United States Roofing sign in your front yard and put a do not solicit sign on your door. If they still knock, just politely tell them that you are being taken care of and shut the door. Do not let them talk because they will not stop.
• Beware of gimmicks: You may hear things such as, “we will pay your deductable,”  “free upgrades,” or “1,000 off.” All of these are defrauding your insurance company, and are against the law. You don’t want to get mixed up in a situation like that.
• You will see billboards: They will be going up everywhere advertising storm damage, cars with ladders on top, and want-ads in every newspaper.
• Understand why people pitch locals: After about two months in to the storm, everyone will start to pitch “use a local company,” or “I’m local.” What happens is the insurance companies convince people of this, which will then promote the use of this type of marketing. Usually this happens later in the storm. Storm chasers start to lease the names of local companies, to use the name to compete against other storm chasers by saying, “we're local.” The truth is, the majority of local companies are either not local, or are new local businesses popping up and trying to benefit from the storm. After all, how many local roofing, siding, or window companies did you have before the storm?
• Look for companies driving nicer vehicles: Usually you can tell the credit status of a company by what they drive. Companies who pay their bills usually drive nicer vehicles than companies that don’t.
• Look for vehicles that have their company name on them in permanent lettering: This assures you that they did not just run out and print a magnetic sign to instantly become a contractor.
• Do not try to profit from your insurance company: This is something that happens a lot during a catastrophic storm. People think that they just won the lottery. You didn’t; you are being paid to repair damage on your property. If you use the money for something else, or defraud your insurance company, two things can happen. You can be guilty of a crime and/or will not be covered in the event of a future storm. This is important because next time it could be a lot worse.  If your insurance company already paid for work to be done and it wasn’t, they won’t pay again.
• Beware of local companies who get more work than they can handle: During a storm,  most local companies who are used to producing 3-5 jobs a week start selling 50-100 jobs per week. This makes it so they do not have the staff in place to manage the jobs. They start hiring new and inexperienced workers while quality starts to slip through the cracks. Workmanship gets very poor, and they have a hard time managing everything that is happening. This sometimes results in unpaid labor and/or materials, and even a possible lien against your home. No matter who you use, make sure they have experience managing the amount of jobs that come along with a weather catastrophe.