What to do if your roofer has ripped you off

If you are reading this, the damage is probably already done. The work is bad, the roofer has stopped returning calls, or the price has jumped to something you never agreed to and the roof is half-open. You feel sick about the money and you are not sure where to start.

Start here. This is the order that matters.

First: stop the bleeding

If the roof is currently exposed — tiles off, felt stripped, anything open to the weather — your first job is not the legal process. Your first job is getting the house watertight. Call a different roofer for an emergency make-safe. A tarp and battens over the exposed area costs £250 to £600 and buys you three to five days to think clearly. Do not let the original roofer back on the roof to "finish" if you no longer trust them.

Keep the receipt for the emergency make-safe. If you end up pursuing the original roofer through the courts, this cost is part of your claim — it is a direct consequence of their failure.

If the roof is closed but the work is defective — leaking, badly finished, wrong materials — it can wait a few days while you gather evidence. Do not rush into a second repair before documenting the first.

Second: document everything, today

Before you clean anything up, before you call anyone, before you compose the angry text — get the evidence locked down. Once you've tidied up or had someone else fix the problem, the physical evidence of the original failure is gone.

• Photograph the work from every angle. Wide shots of the full roof from the ground. Close-ups of the specific defects. Interior damage (water stains, collapsed ceiling, wet insulation). Photograph materials left on site if different from what was quoted.
• Screenshot every text message and WhatsApp conversation with the roofer. Screenshots, not just scroll-throughs — save them as images on your phone and email them to yourself so they exist in two places.
• Print or save every email, invoice, quote, and receipt. If the quote was verbal, write down what was agreed as precisely as you remember — date, amount, scope — and email it to yourself so the timestamp is locked.
• Save bank statements or card receipts showing what you paid, when, and to which account or card terminal.
• If anyone witnessed the work or the conversation — a neighbour who saw the roofer leave halfway through, a partner who was present when the price changed — write their name and what they saw. Contemporaneous notes are evidence in a way that later recollection is not.

All of this takes thirty minutes. It is the single most important thing you can do for your own case, because every route below — Citizens Advice, Small Claims, Section 75, Action Fraud — starts with the same question: "what evidence do you have?"

Third: do not argue on the phone

From this point on, everything goes in writing. Email, not calls. Text, not voicemail. The reason is simple: a written conversation is evidence. A phone argument is a memory, and memories are contested. If the roofer phones you, let it go to voicemail, then respond in email.

The first email should be short and factual:

"I am writing about the roofing work carried out at [address] on [date]. The work is defective in the following ways: [list the specific problems]. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, services must be carried out with reasonable care and skill. I am requesting that you return to remedy the defects within 14 days. If the defects are not remedied, I will pursue a price reduction or refund as provided under the Act."

That letter is not aggressive. It is not emotional. It states the problem, cites the law, and gives a deadline. Citizens Advice has template versions of this letter if you want one pre-written. The important thing is that it exists in writing and has a date.

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 — what it gives you

The CRA 2015 applies automatically to any service bought by a consumer. You do not need a written contract for it to apply — although having one makes enforcement easier. The Act says:

• Services must be performed with reasonable care and skill (section 49).
• If a time was not agreed, the service must be performed within a reasonable time (section 52).
• If a price was not agreed, the consumer must pay a reasonable price (section 51).

If the service was not carried out with reasonable care and skill, the remedy ladder is:

1. Ask for the work to be redone (section 55). The trader must do this within a reasonable time and without significant inconvenience to you. You do not have to pay extra.
2. If the redo fails, or the trader refuses, or re-doing the work is impossible — you are entitled to a price reduction (section 56). This can be up to 100% of the price paid, depending on how serious the failure is.

These are statutory rights. A roofer cannot sign them away in a contract. If the contract says "no refunds" or "all work is final," those terms are unfair and unenforceable under the Act.

Section 75 — if you paid by credit card

If you paid £100 or more of the total by credit card (not debit, not bank transfer), Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 makes the card company equally liable with the trader. This is one of the most powerful consumer protections in UK law and most people do not know it exists.

Phone your credit card company — phone, not email, because the clock starts from the call — and say: "I want to make a Section 75 claim. The trader failed to provide services with reasonable care and skill under the Consumer Rights Act 2015. Here is the evidence." Send them the photos, the quote, the correspondence.

The card company investigates and, if the claim is valid, refunds you directly. They then recover the money from the trader. You do not need to sue the trader yourself. This route works even if the trader has disappeared or dissolved their company.

The catch: the total transaction must be over £100 and under £30,000. Only the portion paid by credit card triggers Section 75, but the claim can cover the full amount. Even paying a £100 deposit on a credit card and the rest by bank transfer is enough to activate it.

Citizens Advice and Trading Standards

Phone Citizens Advice on 0808 223 1133. It is free, and the call is the start of a formal process. They log the complaint, give you case-specific advice, and — where the complaint qualifies — refer it to your local Trading Standards team.

Trading Standards has the power to investigate, prosecute, and in serious cases seek Proceeds of Crime Act confiscation. The Janes operation (£500k fraud, 48 victims, eight years each) and the Nottinghamshire case (£208k, 13.5 years combined) were both prosecuted by Trading Standards. They act. It takes time — months, sometimes years — but the prosecutions are real and the sentences are serious.

What Trading Standards does not do is get your money back directly. They prosecute the offender. For getting your money back, you use the CRA remedy ladder, Section 75, or Small Claims.

Small Claims Court — under £10,000

For disputes under £10,000 in England and Wales, the Small Claims track of the County Court is designed to be used without a solicitor. You can file online through Money Claim Online. Court fees range from £35 to £455 depending on the claim value. The process is:

1. File the claim online with your evidence.
2. The court serves the claim on the roofer, who has 14 days to respond.
3. If they don't respond, you win by default (judgment in default).
4. If they respond and dispute the claim, a hearing is scheduled — usually informal, in a small room, no wigs.
5. A judge decides based on the evidence. If you win, the roofer is ordered to pay.

Most roofers settle before the hearing. The act of receiving a formal court claim concentrates the mind. If they do not settle, the hearing itself is straightforward — bring your photos, your quote, your correspondence, and your timeline. Speak plainly. Judges are used to people without legal training and they are patient with it.

For claims between £10,000 and £25,000, the process is similar but uses the Fast Track, which is slightly more formal. Above £25,000, consider instructing a solicitor.

Action Fraud — if the roofer has disappeared

If the roofer has taken your money and vanished — phone dead, no response to emails, site abandoned — that is fraud, not a contract dispute. Report it to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040or online at actionfraud.police.uk. Action Fraud is the UK's national fraud reporting centre and feeds into the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau.

Be honest about timelines: fraud investigations are slow. Many low-value cases are logged but not actively pursued. The value of reporting is twofold: (a) your report joins a pattern that may already be building against the same individual, and (b) a crime reference number strengthens any civil claim or insurance claim you pursue separately.

Trade body complaints

If the roofer claimed to be a member of a trade body — NFRC, FMB, CompetentRoofer, TrustMark — complain to that body. First verify the membership is real (the trade body's website will have a "find a member" search). If it is:

• NFRC has a consumer complaints process that can compel the member to remedy work or face expulsion.
• FMB runs a disputes resolution service.
• TrustMark registered businesses carry a financial protection scheme — check whether you are covered.

If the membership was fake — if they claimed NFRC and are not on the register — that is a separate offence under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (misleading commercial practice). Report it to Citizens Advice alongside the main complaint.

What realistically happens

Honesty matters here. Not every case ends with a refund and a prosecution. The realistic outcomes, roughly in order of likelihood:

• Section 75 claims have the highest success rate. If you paid by credit card and the evidence is clear, the card company resolves it in weeks.
• Small Claims Courthas a high success rate for well-documented claims. Most roofers settle before the hearing. The ones who don't show up lose by default.
• Trading Standards prosecutions are real but slow. They prioritise repeat offenders and vulnerable victims. A single complaint may not trigger an investigation, but it adds to a pattern that eventually does.
• Action Fraud reports are important for the record but low-value individual cases are rarely actively investigated. The value is in building the pattern.
• Direct negotiation — a CRA remedy letter followed by silence, followed by a Money Claim Online filing — resolves a surprising number of cases because the roofer does not want to explain themselves in front of a judge.

The people who get their money back are, consistently, the people who documented the problem on day one, put everything in writing, and followed the escalation ladder without skipping steps. It is not about being aggressive. It is about having a file that speaks for itself.

The order, on one page

1. Make the house safe if the roof is open. Emergency tarp from a different roofer. Keep the receipt.
2. Document everything — photos, texts, emails, bank records, witness notes. Thirty minutes. Do it today.
3. Write to the roofer citing the Consumer Rights Act 2015. Ask for remedy within 14 days.
4. Phone Citizens Advice on 0808 223 1133. Start the formal record.
5. If you paid by credit card: phone the card company and open a Section 75 claim.
6. If the roofer refuses or ignores: file on Money Claim Online (Small Claims, under £10k).
7. If the roofer has vanished: report to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040.
8. If they claimed a trade body: complain to that body.
9. Keep the file. Every document, every photo, every dated email. The file is the case.

One last thing

If you are reading this because it happened to someone you know rather than to you — an elderly parent, a neighbour, a friend who is too embarrassed to act — the most useful thing you can do is help them with step two. Sit with them, take the photos, screenshot the texts, print the bank statement. The paperwork is the part that feels hardest when you are upset, and it is the part that matters most.

The scam detection guide is the companion to this piece — it describes the seven patterns so you recognise the next one before it starts. The hiring guide is the fifteen-minute checklist that prevents most of what this page describes. Send both to the person who needs them.