Rain Defense Inc

Do not under any circumstances employ these people. They failed to manage a simple re-​roofing job. First they installed the wrong material. Their attempts to fix the error only made the problem worse. My yard ended up covered with flakes of their roof coating. More of it ended up in the gutters in front of the house. Their sheet metal work was shoddy. I could not communicate with anyone on site since they spoke no english. .
I had to climb up on the roof regularly to inspect their work. Supervision is not the customer’s job.
To make matters worse, the owner is rude and unapologetic. I’m inclined to sympathetic since I’ve worked in construction, but these people, particularly the owner, should be avoided.

BEWARE. this was amongst the worst experience with a roofing contractor I have had in 30 years of property management. These people were referred to me by a service which supposedly vets the contractors, so I trusted them. I told them I had 2 jobs for them to review.
I had major work on an apartment consisting of roof and wall siding. I made an appointment with Rain Defense (Adam), and requested my General Contractor be there — for which I paid him!). At the time of the appt. Rain Defense was a NO-​SHOW, we waited 20 minutes, finally I tried to call the estimator who was to meet us. No answer. I called the office and got a woman who said she would have Adam call me. He returned the call and when asked him WHY he did not show up he basically indicated he had another commitment in Alameda, sorta forgetting ours in San Francisco, and stating he didn’t have his cell phone on him in order to call me — bullshit.
he said he could come «now,» but since he was 45 min. — hour away from me what was to do — sit there and wait for this IDIOT.
Then another guy with the company called, Brian, a «senior estimator» though he later told me this was his FIRST week on the job. He was to inspect our property in Oakland, which he or someone else did.
Now the fun part: I received suggestions from Rain Defense stating, as to the SF property, they could not see the damage, so they recommended a water test for $ 800 +/​-​. The damage was SO OBVIOUS a 10 year old child could have pointed it out. Did they even INSPECT the property or were they just so confused, disorganized and befuddled — unfortunately, I was to learn it was the latter.
Same with the Oakland property — water test suggested — another $ 800 — $ 900…is this some sort of automatic response from them for quick easy money?
After that I received a couple of estimates for the Oakland job — but they were for the WRONG property, not even mine. I corrected them, but AGAIN received emails with a property I did not own nor knew anything about.
I emailed the OWNER, Mike 2 –3 times — NO reply — that is very professional for a company… where the owner doesn’t even give a damn to see what the problem (s) are.
Lastly, after more drama, I called the referring company and they told me Rain Defense had been REMOVED from the recommendations !!
By the way, we did hire another Contractor, that inspected, prepared a contract, and agreed to start the work (no water test required)…it is now almost finished and things have been going well and smooth

Regardless of whether they do good work or not, they have absolutely zero respect for the residents of the buildings they work on and an almost snarky unwillingness to show respect even when told multiple times by both residents and clients to do so.
They come on days when residents are not expecting them (we would get notices from our prop mgmt company), don’t come on days when they are, and will just appear outside your bedroom window when you least expect it; they will repeatedly ring residents’ doorbells at any hour of the day until someone lets them in, even though they should (and often do) have keys to the building.
They leave doors unlocked (my bike was stolen from the back of my building, and there is now graffiti in our back hallway), leave dangerous loose items out (loose corrugated hard plastic that flew off the roof onto the street below).
They followed me in this morning with a building inspector. I said, «I hope you weren’t ringing anybody’s doorbell.» The inspector sarcastically said, «Oh, we would never do that.» Well they did, multiple times, while my 11-​year-​old daughter was home alone and didn’t know what to do. Shame on you Rain Defense, and shame on you inspector.
DO NOT HIRE THIS COMPANY

I have used Rain defense once before and because of product issues we had some problems. Mike came back to the house and made it good We so appreciated his help with the problem.
I also used him to pinpoint a leak in the room below the deck. He sent out his foreman Gelber who diagnosed the problem and with his crew, corrected the problem and put on a new deck. The entire crew cleaned up every night, moved all the furniture and kept me aware of what was happening every step of the way. Without a doubt I will use Rain Defense for any water problems. Mike also followed up after the job was done and made sure I was satisfied.
I work full time and dealing with a company you can trust, stays on deadline and shows up everyday was great.

Called Rain Defense to deal with a nightmare scenario up on our roof in Berkeley. We have a cell site on our roof owned by a major carrier starting with the letter «A», and they did a terrible install recently. The site platform leaked from day one of their most recent cell site cabinet «upgrade».
Mike at Rain Defense came out and really took the bull by the horns. He not only worked to correct the problem — which required renting a crane and having a full crew up there for several days, waterproofing under the cell cabinets and improving the roof tie-​ins — but he worked directly with the carrier and their subcontractors.
He also kept my tenant down below informed as to what was going on — and calm — and that was a great relief to me as landlord (…nothing worse than an upset tenant that’s getting rained on). He kept them dry during the entire process, and dealt with a lot of red tape on the other end involving the temporary shut-​down of a major cell site so that the cabinets could be lifted.
When it came time to get reimbursed for damages, he was very firm with the carrier and in no uncertain terms, made it clear they needed to reimburse us for 100% of the damage they had caused due to lousy waterproofing practices during the site upgrade. They paid without any argument.
Rain Defense is my vendor for all roof repairs from now on. 5-​stars.