Rogues who leave you high and not dry...
This week on Rogue Traders, we're looking at Brett Clarke of Sutton Coldfield Roofcare, based, unsurprisingly, in Sutton Coldfield. We've heard from a number of his unhappy customers who have been appalled by his company's shoddy workmanship. Some have even secured judgments against him at the small claims court, but Clarke has ignored demands to pay them back, defying even bailiffs...
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Richard and Becki Wallman employed Sutton Coldfield Roofcare in 2008 to replace the flat roof of their kitchen extension. They paid £1,000 for the work to be done, but just a couple of months later they started having problems and brown water started running down the outside of their house.
The couple contacted Sutton Coldfield Roofcare and asked them to come and rectify the work but no-one came. As winter came, the situation got a lot worse.
"It [water] actually started coming in through the ceiling, and it was running out of the light fittings," Becki described. "If it had rained overnight, we'd come downstairs in the morning and the whole floor, the work tops would be covered in brown water, so we're trying to keep the kids out until we've mopped up."
With the kitchen almost uninhabitable, the Wallmans had no choice but to get another company to repair their roof, costing them further £2,000.
It was only once the new company began working that Becki and Richard realised the extent of the poor work.
"As soon as they started taking off the roof, the ceiling came down," Becki explained, "basically, the old roof had been left on, underneath the bit of new roofing felt and it had all rotted and the water had all got in, and it was just water logged up there and the insulation was so heavy that as soon as there was any vibration from them removing the roof, the entire ceiling came down in this room."
The Wallmans decided to pursue the boss of Sutton Coldfield Roofcare, Brett Clarke, for the money they had spent on putting the kitchen right. They took their case to the small claims court where they were issued with a county court judgement and Clarke was ordered to pay the couple £2080.
However, Mr Clarke didn't pay out, and even after the Wallmans hired bailiffs, they failed to recover their money. Eventually, Mr Clarke posted a number of £100 cheques through the Wallmans' door - one dated for the end of each month. The Wallmans started cashing the cheques, but after a few cleared the cheques were stopped, leaving the Wallmans £1500 out of pocket.
Time for us to do our thing and call out Sutton Coldfield Roofcare. We set up a house, employed an actress to pose as the home owner (we called her Alice), installed our cameras and got roofing expert Alan Wright set a simple fault. Alan unclipped a bit of guttering and removed a gasket (rubber seal) to make the guttering leak - a simple and quick fault for any competent roofer to fix.
A man called Richard from Sutton Coldfield Roofcare turned up to help fix our leak. Straight away, he thought he'd identified the fault and clipped the guttering back into place. Unfortunately, he didn't replace the rubber seal, leaving us with a leak, just as before. Whilst roofer Richard was at the house, homeowner Alice asked him to take a look at the roof, and see what sort of condition it was in. Richard said it desperately needed patching up on two hips at the front, one hip at the back and two sets of verges at the back. He also said the guttering needed cleaning out and a small section repairing. He said Sutton Coldfield Roofcare could carry out this work for £450. Alice agreed to the work, and the company said they would come back a few days later.
Richard returned with two other lads from Sutton Coldfield Roofcare. Before starting work, one of the guys urinated on the side of our house, and as work continued the roofers displayed a heart-stopping series of acrobatics and at one point almost fell off the ladder. Once the team had gone, chartered surveyor Alan Wright surveyed the work.
Alan told us that the verges on the house have been repointed satisfactorily but that was the extent of the adequate work. On the front hips, Alan discovered that the roofers had chipped away at the sound mortar and then after giving up, they had merely buttered over the ridge. This work has left the ridge weaker than before, as the mortar is no longer provides a sound seal. To top it all off, Alan says this bit of work was not necessary in the first place.
On this section at the front, Alan also discovered that the roofers had stuck broken tiles together with mortar to try and form the ridge, rather than replacing the tiles with new ones cut down to size. Again, this causes a weaker section of the roof which could, in time, leak.
On the side of the house, the roofers were meant to repair some guttering, but did a poor job and left it liable to damage and leaking. Furthermore, the team also did not clean out all the guttering as promised.
So after all their work, Sutton Coldfield Roofcare had left our roof worse off than it was before, and on top of that, the leaky guttering that we originally called them out to repair still was not fixed.
We called out boss Brett Clarke to another house to confront him with our allegations, but unfortunately he ran off without giving Matt any answers to our questions.
