The company's brand ambassador is former Bachelor NZ star Art Green. Video / Ben Dickens / Carson Bluck
An Auckland man claims Roofbuddy, fronted by Art Green, operates like a “modern day cowboy”.
Kenian Fatherly’s roof replacement led to a legal win after poor workmanship was discovered.
Roofbuddy CEO James Logan defended the roofer as highly experienced, saying he had completed almost 100 other jobs on the Roofbuddy platform.
Another Aucklander, Tim Stewart, faced an 18-month ordeal with Roofbuddy, resulting in tenant compensation and stress.
An Auckland man says a roofing platform is operating like a “modern-day cowboy”.
Kenian Fatherly told the Herald he trusted Roofbuddy to find a competent contractor to replace the roof on his home in Papakura because of its professional marketing, but the work was substandard and ended at the Disputes Tribunal, where he won.
Roofbuddy CEO James Logan has defended the roofer as highly experienced, saying he had completed almost 100 other jobs on the platform.
Brand ambassador Art Green appears on social media and in YouTube promotional videos offering glittering endorsements of the Roofbuddy service.
“I know that Roofbuddy checks all their roofing partners, so I was pretty confident they were all really good options,” he said in a YouTube marketing video.
While his talent agent told the Herald Green is not involved in Roofbuddy operations, Green and his wife Matilda Green are listed as company shareholders.
The company’s website says it’s a “hassle free service” that connects customers with professional roofers with “proven track records” and warns customers “cowboys are always lurking”.
However Fatherly told the Herald his attempt to get a new roof for his family home ended in a bitter legal dispute.
Kenian Fatherly has accused roofing platform Roofbuddy of acting like "cowboys".
An independent assessor has determined the workmanship of the contractor Roofbuddy recommended for Fatherly’s job was so poor, the entire roof must be removed and replaced.
“It [Roofbuddy] is like a cowboy with a fancy website and some social media influencer on the front page to make it look pretty” he said.
Art Green in an ad for RoofBuddy shared on social media.
Kenian Fatherly said he signed up with Roofbuddy because the company says it performs safety checks on roofers, and because it claimed to use third-party quality assurance experts to check workmanship before signing off the job.
Roof cladding has been poorly installed and not by a qualified roofing contractor or not supervised by one.
An independent building surveyor who Fatherly engaged after being dissatisfied with the work on his re-roof issued a scathing report of the quality of the finished product.
Among the defects found were visible deformities and indentations in the cladding, rust marks from metal debris being left on the roof, and incorrectly installed gutter fixings.
Dents in the roof after contractors had completed work on Kenian Fatherly's Papakura home.
“The author is of the opinion that the roof cladding has been poorly installed and not by a qualified roofing contractor or was not supervised by one,” the report said.
The report went on to recommend the roof be removed and replaced in its entirety.
Excessive swarf or metal shavings from cutting cladding were photographed on Kenian Fatherly's roof which led to rusting.
Fatherly told the Herald he took the contractor Trade Winds Limited to the Disputes Tribunal and won with the authority ordering the company to refund Fatherly $17,000 because the work was not carried out with reasonable care and skill.
Since the ruling, Trade Winds owner Sandy Song has not made payment, and Fatherly says Roofbuddy has “run for the hills”.
“The thing that really annoyed me the most with Roofbuddy is that it took no accountability.”
The Herald approached Song for comment but is yet to receive a response.
“He washed hands of the whole thing altogether. To this day he still won’t take my phone calls.”
“The thing that really annoyed me the most with Roofbuddy is that it took no accountability.”
Fatherly was also critical of Roofbuddy’s so-called third-party quality assurance checks on completed work saying there’s a clear conflict of interest when their expert is an employee of Roofbuddy.
“A third party would be somebody who’s not employed by the roofing contractor and not employed by Roofbuddy.”
Logan maintains the company’s quality assessors are independent but acknowledged they can and have made mistakes in the past and the company is focused on making improvements.
‘An absolute nightmare’
Tim Stewart says his experience with Roofbuddy and a roofing contractor was a nightmare that dragged out for 18 months.
Tim Stewart who lives in Sydney told the Herald he faced a “nightmare” 18 months dealing with RoofBuddy and the contractor it organised to work on his rental in Auckland’s Titirangi.
Roofbuddy was engaged to find a contractor to replace his roof in mid-2023, but Stewart said it took until late December last year before he had a roof that was watertight and compliant.
He described the ordeal as an “absolute nightmare”.
An independent review of the work carried out on Tim Stewart's Titirangi rental found significant shortcomings, including poor joins, loose screws and leaks.
Stewart said the roof on his rental was replaced and then signed off by RoofBuddy’s quality assurance inspector.
Despite this, in the weeks that followed, he said there were leaks which caused damage to the home’s interior plasterboard and circuitry shorted because of water ingress.
“I went to the property and was horrified. I could see issues.”
Stewart then returned from Sydney to Auckland to inspect the work and said the poor workmanship was obvious.
“I went to the property and was horrified. I could see issues,” he told the Herald.
He suspects the contractor engaged to do the work had minimal roofing experience.
“It was my layman’s inspection which raised some red flags. I was like, hold on, this has been certified. How has this been certified when it looks like this.”
He noticed damaged panels and said the roofing iron extended so far into the gutters he was barely able to get his hand inside to clear them of debris.
A skylight in Tim Stewart's home started leaking after roofing contractors had finished at his property.
Stewart then engaged his own independent roofers to inspect the work both of whom identified significant flaws.
“It was basically a s*** show,” he said.
In the meantime, Stewart’s tenants took him to the tenancy tribunal because of the leaks, rubbish being left strewn around the property by contractors, and ongoing disruptions from workers turning up unannounced at the property.
“I am completely in their [his tenants] camp. I think I would have done that same had it been me.”
His tenants won their case at the tribunal, and he had to pay them $5000 in compensation.
Loose screws were photographed on Tim Stewart's newly installed roof.
He said while RoofBuddy acted to remedy the issues he said he had to nag the company constantly for updates in an “incredibly stressful” process that dragged out for months.
“It felt very much like a shirking of their [Roofbuddy’s] responsibilities or unloading the responsibility to someone else.”
In total, it took around 18 months before he had a roof that was watertight and compliant.
He said he signed up with Roofbuddy because they secured the cheapest quote, but he wouldn’t do it again.
“In hindsight, had I known the dramas, I would have been more than happy to fork out a bit more upfront and with the peace of mind.”
Roofbuddy’s CEO James Logan maintained the roofer contracted to work on Stewart’s rental was experienced but did the job poorly, engaged in misleading conduct and then became uncontactable.
“Our degree of confidence in him was ultimately misplaced.”
“Quality assessors are subject to human error”
Logan said the quality checks were completed and the roofer was asked to fix issues that had been identified.
“The roofer subsequently leveraged his personal relationship with our assessor and used a series of misleading photographs to falsely show the remedial actions were taken – so he could induce our send out of the QA [quality assurance] report and collect payment.
Asked why Roofbuddy would sign off jobs when other experts had raised serious concerns, Logan said roofing is “complex” and issues can be “opaque”.
“Quality assessors are subject to human error and have gone through an iterative improvement process of refinements; instructed by events such as Tim’s installation,” he said.
He said all roofers joining Roofbuddy must have “appropriate trade qualifications” and be certified.
“I acknowledge that these requirements and the quality assurance assessments we conduct are an imperfect filter and subject to human and system error; they are also the most rigorous in the industry.”
Michael Morrah is a senior investigative reporter/team leader at the Herald. He won the best coverage of a major news event at the 2024 Voyager NZ Media Awards and has twice been named reporter of the year. He has been a broadcast journalist for 20 years and joined the Herald’s video team in July 2024.
