Busy Bee Team

We hired Ben Simson and his company to re-shingle the roof of our house. At the time Ben represented himself as a Master shingle applicator certified by the shingle manufacturer. He also sold us a 20-year guarantee on his workmanship through the shingle manufacturer. The work done was a complete tear off, down to the plywood roof decking, and a complete re-shingle. Approximately two years after the roofing work was done by Ben and his company, more than 30 gallons of rain water poured onto our first-floor kitchen ceiling ruining the ceiling. So much water poured in so quickly that it actually poured out of our kitchen cabinets. We ripped apart the inside walls on our second floor and determined that the leak was coming from the area where the house roof meets the outside wall on our rear dormer. We contacted Ben Simson about the problem and spent months trying to get him to fix it but he continually refused. We called the shingle manufacturer about our 20-year workmanship guarantee and it turned out that Ben did not fill out the necessary paperwork with them. Ben had sold us a guarantee that he never actually delivered. Eventually, we hired another contractor to fix the problem. When the leaky area was dismantled, we found that the area was leaking slightly for at least a year, possibly two. We also found that the step flashing had been incorrectly sized and incorrectly installed. It did not meet the minimum size specifications for step flashing and overlap specified by the shingle manufacturer for the shingles that Ben supplied, installed, and was supposedly certified for. The other contractor also found a lot of other workmanship problems on our roof. Even the simplest of flashings was improperly installed or damaged and then repaired by Ben's workmen using substandard methods. The waterproofing house-wrap paper had been deliberately removed from underneath the vinyl siding on our front dormers by Ben's workmen. We again contacted Ben Simson to try to get him to repair these problems, but he continually denied that his workmanship was substandard. We hired an attorney and placed a lawsuit against Ben Simson for almost $10,000, our cost to repair our roof, fix the leak, and repair the damage within our home. The other contractor we hired agreed to testify against Ben Simson's workmanship in court. Our attorney tried to work with Ben to straighten out the problems for another year. Finally, two weeks before the trial was to take place, Ben Simson filed Chapter 13 Bankruptcy stopping the trial and protecting him from our lawsuit. We are currently working with the bankruptcy court to recover the cost of our damages, but our attorney has told us that reimbursement from Ben is extremely unlikely. It turns out that the list of people that Ben Simson owes money to is about four pages long, and he is planning to pay less than one percent of the money that he owes all of us. When we hired Ben Simson and his company, he seemed to have a good reputation with local people we had spoken with. Looking back on it, I'm not sure at all where this reputation had come from. It turns out that Ben Simson is only a roofing broker that subcontracts with another company to actually do the roofing. Go to this URL to see the meeting minutes from a RI Contractors' board meeting where Ben Simson addresses the board to determine if he can avoid purchasing roofing insurance because he is only a roofing broker. [*** Link removed ***] He states that he is simply a roofing subcontractor that subs all work out to another company and he believes that the company he hires to actually do the roofing work should have the responsibility of carrying roofing insurance. Luckily the board did deny his request. On January 11th 2012, at 12:40 PM, Ben Simson again addressed the RI Contractors' board. The minutes for this meeting are available at the following URL. [*** Link removed ***] The portion of the meeting minutes that deals with Ben Simson begins at the top of page 3. This time, Ben tried to get seven claims against him expunged from his record. Based on these meeting minutes, Ben couldn't recall the facts of many of the cases against him or even the people involved. Three of the homeowners involved contacted the board to request that their claims not be removed from Ben's record and one of the homeowners stated that she was still very dissatisfied with the work done on her home by Busy Bee. All of the requests made by Ben to remove the cases against him from his record were denied. I should also note that none of these seven claims against Ben have anything to do with the problems we had with him and his company.

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THEY DID A SUPER JOB. I WAS QUITE PLEASED, BECAUSE I KNOW A THING OR TWO ABOUT ROOFING. THE BOSS ALWAYS ASKED ME THROUGHOUT THE JOB IF I HAD ANY COMPLAINTS OR QUESTIONS.