The Repairing Accuracy Method

A storm claim almost never fails because the damage wasn't real. It fails at one of five points where the number goes wrong and nobody catches it, and by the time a homeowner notices, the money is gone and the roof is already on.

So the name is literal in both directions. We repair roofs, and we repair the accuracy of the number, because on a claim-funded roof those are the same job. Here's where the accuracy breaks, and what we do at each point to keep it from breaking.

Why Measure Before Filing the Claim?

Because you cannot argue a number nobody measured. A homeowner who calls their carrier first and gets inspected second has handed the entire evidentiary record to one party, and it's not the party writing the check to them.

Checkpoint one is a Haag-certified inspection with dated photographs, hit counts, and slope-by-slope measurements, finished before a single call goes to the carrier. Haag Engineering certification is the forensic standard the insurance industry itself uses, which is exactly why a report in that format changes how a claim starts. It also protects you in the other direction: if there's nothing claim-worthy up there, you find out before a claim goes on your record. That's the whole argument for inspecting without filing.

Why Does the Estimate Format Matter So Much?

Because two documents that can't be compared line to line don't get reconciled, they get ignored. A contractor who sends a carrier a one-line bid for a number has produced a document the adjuster has no way to engage with, and the adjuster's estimate wins by default.

Checkpoint two writes the scope as line items in the same estimating format the adjuster works in. Now there's a row-by-row comparison instead of two competing totals, and every disagreement has an address. If you want to see what that looks like from your side of it, we published a walkthrough of how to read your adjuster's estimate and a real C&N invoice next to the approved scope it came from.

Why Be There When the Adjuster Inspects?

Because everything resolvable gets resolved standing on the shingle. Once an adjuster leaves and the disagreement moves to email, you're arguing weeks later about photographs of a roof nobody can point at anymore, and the process that follows is slower and worse for you.

Checkpoint three puts us at your carrier's inspection with the report already in hand. You're welcome to be there and many homeowners are, but the point is that you don't have to face it alone with no idea what you're looking at. To be exact about the boundary: we're there to show what we documented on our own scope of work. We're not there to negotiate your policy, because Illinois reserves that for licensed public adjusters.

What Is a Supplement, and Why Does It Decide the Number?

A supplement is a documented request to add line items a carrier's first estimate left out, submitted with photographs as additions to their own estimate. They're routine and they're not adversarial. Adjusters work fast, and some damage simply photographs badly from the ground.

Gutters are the classic example. On a recent insurance-funded roof, the carrier's first estimate missed 292 linear feet of gutter work entirely. The documented supplement recovered it as a $2,928 line added to the carrier's own estimate, with photos attached. Nobody argued, because there was nothing to argue about.

This is the checkpoint where the money actually lives, and it's the one a homeowner has almost no way to run alone. An unsupplemented miss doesn't disappear. It becomes your out-of-pocket cost, discovered on install day.

Why Would a Roofer Credit Money Back?

Because a final invoice that keeps money for work nobody performed is padding, and padding aimed at a carrier is still padding. Checkpoint five matches the final invoice line by line against the approved scope, and anything we didn't do comes off.

The smallest one we've issued was $13.81, for a downspout item that didn't end up getting installed. It would have been easier to leave it on. But a contractor whose accuracy only runs in their own favor doesn't have a standard, they have a sales pitch, and the $2,928 supplement above only means something because the $13.81 credit exists. Both documents are published on our billing transparency page. It's a fair question to ask any contractor bidding your roof: show me a past invoice with a credit line on it.

What Does the Method Not Control?

Worth being exact about, because a system that claims to control everything is a system to distrust.

What You Get in Writing After the Inspection

Not a pressure close at your kitchen table. After the inspection you get a written Roof Claim Strategy Map, and you read it at home with nobody sitting across from you.

It's one page, specific to your roof, and it contains what we found with the photo numbers to check it against, the week-by-week timeline of what happens and who does it, what we expect your carrier to do and the reasoning behind that expectation, and every dollar you would be responsible for including the two exceptions. Those exceptions are rotted decking if we find it, because crews can't stand on rotten boards, and any upgrade you choose beyond the approved scope. Both get named in writing before anyone climbs a ladder rather than discovered on install day.

What it will never contain is a promise that your claim gets approved, or an offer to waive your deductible. We can't do the first one and the second one is illegal in Illinois, which makes it a fast way to identify who you're really talking to when someone offers it.

Related Decisions

• How we get paid if the inspection is free
• How to read your adjuster's estimate
• How to tell a legitimate roofing bill from a padded one
• What to do when a roof claim is denied or underpaid