Baby Bear Inc

The day of the service, three young guys showed up to do the work. While they seemed to be working the whole time, they left a bit of a mess once the job was done (moving our patio furniture and never moving it back - including a lawn chair that had been left on its side in the middle of the yard, leaving our garden hose out in the middle of the lawn, etc.) and overall did not seem very professional. But naturally we had faith that they did the work properly. We were completely mistaken. Being that my husband is disabled and I was pregnant at the time, neither of us could get on the roof to see the work they had done. I now wish we were able to. Several months after the work was done we kept noticing that large amounts of water were coming from behind the gutter and running toward the side of the house in several locations. In the months that followed (over a course of a year) we called The Gutter Guys twice to come out and service the gutters to correct the problem. Both times we were told that the problem had been resolved, but it never seemed to correct it permanently. Within a year of having these GutterGards put on, we discovered a major water leak into the back room of our house. The water not only destroyed our beautiful, only 3 year old hardwood floors, but rotted the plywood sub-floor underneath them and attracted termites! Within a very short period of time, we had to treat the entire house for termites ($1000), and rip up the beautiful floor ($1500 for the original cost of the floor, plus $300 to rip it up and remove the damaged wood) and have it inspected for mold! In 18 years, this room (or house for that matter) had NEVER had a water problem - at least not until The Gutter Guys came in! Realizing that the problem had likely come from the water leaking behind the gutters and down the side of the house, we called them out immediately, for the third time. However, when I called, I was informed that new owners had recently acquired the franchise and that the new owners were not responsible for work that the previous owners had performed, but that "as a favor" (!) they would come out and take a look at the problem. They were scheduled for a Wednesday morning, when I got the call at 7:30am cancelling the appointment due to rain! (This of course would have been the ideal time for them to inspect a problem such as this.) The appointment was rescheduled for the following Friday. The day of the appointment, The Gutter Guys truck pulled up my driveway and three guys got out. Two of them climbed up on my roof before the third even came to the door to talk to me. I came out and talked to him about the problems we were having and described everything in detail. He confirmed that they had "had a ton of problems like this from the previous owners" and would see what they could do to help. He got up on the roof and was up there for about 5 minutes when he came back down and was on his cell phone for another 10 minutes or so. In the meantime, the other two guys packed up their ladders and got back in the truck and were sitting in it with the motor running. I came out and the guy got off his phone and informed me that I had quite a problem on my hands and that they were installed completely wrong. To quote him, he actually stated that the entire job had been screwed up and that was why I was getting this water in my house! He then proceeded to tell me that he would have to go back and discuss things with his boss and they would send me an estimate. Naturally, I was pretty upset at the idea of putting out any more money for this, and told him I did not expect to be charged. I was also upset because I had been told on the phone that whatever work they needed to do could be done at this appointment time. He stated that there was no way for him to do that work then because it was too big of a job. Further, when I asked him to describe to me in detail HOW he was going to correct the problem, he kept avoiding details and talking around it - saying things like "we will make it right", "the water will flow correctly", "we will adjust it so it works". Since I am knowledgeable about some of these things, I asked him to describe to me in detail once again exactly what would be done to correct the issue, and at that point, he condescendingly asked me "what do YOU do for a living?" After I responded that that was none of his business, he proceeded to tell me that it wasn't his job to explain what would be done! I then asked him if he would be the one doing the work, how did he feel that it was not his responsibility to not describe the work being done? And he once more restated that yes, he was the one that would be doing the work but that it was not his job to explain how. After I was noticeably upset, he started walking back to his truck and said "we're gonna take off now" and that they would mail me something! (I have never received anything.) However, the entire experience got much worse still. The next day, I scheduled the owner of a reputable roofing company to come and assess the situation. He confirmed to my husband and myself that not only were the GutterGards installed completely incorrectly, and had indeed caused the entire water issue in our home - but that they were NEVER the right product for the type of roof we had, and in the very poor installation, the workers had done significant damage to our roof which would void any type of warranty existing on this ONLY 5 YEAR OLD roof! To correct the problem, the ONLY complete solution would be to remove all of the GutterGards, and install a new roof! He was also nice enough to take pictures for us for us to finally see. We were flabbergasted to see, screws and nails forced THROUGH the roof, busted shingles, the rubber edging of our roof literally peeled up and pathetic attempts at correction by globs of caulk - including over screw and nail holes in the shingles they busted! Further, ALL of the water coming off the back of the house, was bypassing the back gutter and running behind the siding of the house saturating the plywood and window frames. Oh and by the way, the gutters were full of debris - so they were either never cleaned to begin with, or the GutterGards had not kept anything out the way they were supposed to do that either. We have since received two other expert opinions that confirm all of this same thing. The cost of a new roof is more than $8000 which is ON TOP of the existing thousands of dollars in losses directly resulting from these GutterGards. With a newborn at home, we are completely devastated by this loss, and intend to explore any avenue possible to retrieve some of our losses. We hope at least THIS report may prevent some of the devastation from occurring to someone else!