RWC Building Products

Excellent experience. My contractor sent me to RWC, Phoenix for roofing selection. Showroom was very organized and pleasant to view products in. I was expecting the typical hurried, impatient customer service experience found in the building trades. My expectation was blown away by Matthew. Matthew had a great disposition, unhurried, offered full product explanations. I had to follow up by phone for further clarifications as my project progressed. Again, Matthew was on top of his game. Thanks for a great experience.

I’m rating on a curve because all building product suppliers I’ve dealt with are really pretty bad. I found RWC to be the same as others.
Don’t expect any help. They expect you to already understand how they do things. For example, returning product you go inside and wait in line while looking at a counter with many stations and lots of employees but never more than 1 or 2 people actually helping anyone. And by «line» I mean you’re left to try and figure out if there is a line and who’s next. Once waited on they fill out a form and hand you a copy… without a word, maybe a «here». Soooo what do I do with this? «Give it to a forklift guy»…“Where?”…now he’s mad and says «outside»…oh thank you for your help, I thought maybe the fork lifts where in the showroom.
Outside you find a dozen or so customers sitting around their trucks waiting. Who’s next? Who knows. The trick seems to be to stand there with the paper you got inside and a fork lift guy sees it and does indeed come by and takes it. This goes surprisingly fast… but if you don’t know to have the piece of paper showing… good luck. The fork lift dude picks up your returns, writes something on the form and you go back inside to wait in line again. Buy the stuff you need and back outside to wait in line a again. By the time its over you have 8 full sheets of invoice… by the end of a project you have a real mess of paperwork. Hello 1980’s.
Some employees are friendly enough, some are a real nightmare. Each employee seems to know a little bit of the business and when they don’t they try to bs thru. For example, returning shingles that had the a lot of wrong color granules (brown on a black shingle) I was told I was using the shingle upside down… really dude, you work at a building supply and can’t tell how shingles are oriented? Or are you just trying to bs me? Don’t know. Then says they can’t return them because the shingle was cut even through it’s clearly a manufacturer defect. OK, so I should nail these onto the roof and put in a guarantee claim with the manufacturer? I ask to talk to someone else who starts right in with we can’t take them back because they’ve been cut, bundle has been opened, etc. So I say I got a bunch that haven’t been cut so can return those? They don’t like this at all but agree to at least go outside to look. More of the same, the bundles have been opened can’t be returned. The screaming now starts. «You’re telling me the manufacturer won’t take back defective product?» RWC dude says «You can’t return a meal after eating some now can you?» in an attempt to convince me what I’m asking is unreasonable…“Dude, where are you eating? Of course you can return a meal after eating some and there’s a problem. And the waiter will apologize and try and fix it.” This concept he apparently thought I was just making up as he repeated it several times because I clearly didn’t understand.
Back inside another RWC dude joins the party and comes outside and I hear him quietly say to the other «this is a manufacturer defect» and says some code they can use to get their money back… from then on everything changes and they replace the bundles no problem. So that’s the deal, they don’t really strand behind their products. If they sell you crap you’re stuck with it unless they can figure out how they can return it.
50 lbs of 1.25″ roofing nails had a mix of nails ranging from 4″ to 7/​8″, lots of misshaped nails, small heads, etc.
21 squares of «seconds» were fused together and unusable. They tried to convince to just bring back the fused bundles… carrying 21 squares off a roof… right. They took them back when I agreed to buy a better grade… extra delivery charge but at least no 25% restocking charge. The new shingles, Malarkey, also had fusing problems, the bottom shingle was often fused to the plastic wrapper making it unusable (although I assume most roofer would use it anyways, who would know? until it blew off of course). I just ate those as returning them is such a hassle.
25% restocking fee for returned product which is the standard building supply crap so they make their profit no matter what. When they sell you defective product and you have to haul it all back, wait in line and scream at them until they take it back…25% discount? Nope. A «sorry»? Nope. You eat that.
I’ve never considered service at Home Depot and Lowes to be very good… but graded on a curve they’re not that bad and return policy is great compared to RWC and other building suppliers.
I’m not upset with RWC… it’s how their entire industry works… really low standards for products and service. They have absolutely no reason to improve. So I would go back to RWC if I had to, but sure wouldn’t want to. I would only buy products I had little choice in buying. For example all the other roofing supplies like flashing, cement, etc I got elsewhere (HD) which was cheaper, faster, I assume as good or better quality and return is a breeze.

I was referred to RWC by the distributor of a tile I wanted for my bathroom renovations. I had conversations with two people at RWC, although the first interaction was not so much a conversation as a one sided Q&A session with a woman from the Scottsdale store who’s response to each of my three questions was a single word ‘No’. After the third ‘no’ I thanked her for her helpfulness (detect the tone) and called someone at the Phoenix store. On face value, he was far more willing to help me find the tiles I was looking for and said he would call the manufacturer after the weekend and then get back to me. I left four voicemails over the following week and did not get a returned call. I’ve advised the tile manufacturer that I won’t be buying their tile and why.

Fast service, great roofing material and funny staff. The crew at RWC is pleasant to work with and carry great product for roofing and tile.