The Roofers We Accept, and How to Check Them Yourself
We are paid by the contractor we send you to, so nothing we say about them should be taken on faith. Everything below is written to be checked. Each standard comes with why it is on the list, what to ask, and the public record you can open yourself in about five minutes.
We only accept roofing vendors who clear this bar
We are not a roofing company and we do not do the work. What we control is who we are willing to send a homeowner to. This is the standard.
- Manufacturer certified, not just "installs the brand". Anyone can buy Owens Corning shingles at a supply house. A manufacturer certification is issued to the contractor, and it is what allows an extended material warranty to be written at all.
- Carries general liability and workers compensation. If an uninsured crew member is hurt on your roof, that can land on your homeowners policy. Certificates should be produced on request, before work starts.
- A written workmanship warranty, separate from the material warranty. The material warranty covers the shingle. The workmanship warranty covers the install. Most Charlotte contractors offer one year. We look for five.
- A real local address and a verifiable business registration. Storm chasers arrive after hail and leave before the warranty matters. A registered entity with a local address is still reachable in year six.
- Never offers to pay or absorb your insurance deductible. It is illegal, it exposes you as well as the contractor, and a contractor willing to do it is telling you exactly how they handle rules.
Accepted right now, and the only one
Eastern Oak Roofing LLC
- out of 5 across 117 Google reviews
- Owens Corning Preferred Contractor
- GAF Certified
- 5-year workmanship warranty
- Up to 50-year material warranty
- BBB accredited, rating A
Checked 2026-09-10. We re-check quarterly. We are paid an advertising fee by the roofing contractor we refer you to. You pay us nothing. That fee does not change your price and does not depend on what you spend.
Why each item is on the list, and how to verify it without us
1. Manufacturer certified, not just "installs the brand"
Why it matters. Anyone with a supplier account can buy Owens Corning or GAF shingles. A certification is issued to the contractor, and it is the thing that makes an extended system warranty possible at all. It also puts a second party behind you, because a manufacturer can pull a certification, and a contractor who wants to keep one behaves differently on your roof.
What to ask. Which certification do you hold, and under exactly what legal company name. Which warranty are you registering my roof under, what does it actually cover, and will you send me the registration confirmation after the job. A contractor who cannot answer the third question is not registering anything.
How to check it. Owens Corning contractor locator and GAF contractor locator. One honest caveat: these locators are incomplete. Smaller certified contractors routinely fail to appear, so a blank result is not evidence of anything either way. The credentials shown on this site for Eastern Oak Roofing LLC were confirmed by the company owners and did not return through the public locators. The strongest proof available to you is the warranty registration document after your roof is finished.
2. Carries general liability and workers compensation
Why it matters. If someone is hurt on your roof and the company has no workers compensation coverage, that can end up on your homeowners policy. If a crew puts a ladder through your bay window and there is no general liability policy, the repair is your problem to chase. This is the single most expensive thing on the list to get wrong and the easiest to verify.
What to ask. Ask for a certificate of insurance sent to you directly by their insurance agent rather than forwarded by the contractor. Ask that you be named as certificate holder. Check that the policy period covers the actual dates your roof will be installed, and check that the company name on the certificate matches the name on your contract exactly.
How to check it. Call the agent using the number printed on the certificate, not a number the contractor gives you, and ask whether the policy is currently in force. For North Carolina workers compensation coverage, the North Carolina Industrial Commission maintains a public coverage lookup.
3. A written workmanship warranty, separate from the material warranty
Why it matters. These are two different documents from two different parties. The material warranty is the manufacturer promising the shingle is not defective. The workmanship warranty is the contractor promising they installed it correctly. Nearly every leak in the first several years is an installation problem, and the material warranty does not touch those. Most Charlotte contractors offer one year of workmanship coverage. Our standard asks for five.
What to ask. How many years, exactly what is excluded, is it transferable if I sell the house, and does it cover the labor to tear back into the roof or only the replacement parts. Get the answer in the contract. A verbal warranty is worth exactly what it sounds like.
How to check it. Read the actual warranty document before you sign anything, not the sentence in the sales brochure. Then apply the uncomfortable test: a workmanship warranty is only as durable as the company behind it, which is why the next item exists.
4. A real local address and a verifiable business registration
Why it matters. After a hail event, Charlotte fills with out of state crews working from a motel and a magnetic door sign. They are gone before anything they installed has had a chance to leak. A registered entity with a physical local address is still findable in year six when your workmanship warranty means something.
What to ask. What is the exact registered legal name of the company that will be on my contract. How long have you been at this address. Is the entity on the contract the same entity carrying the insurance and the certification. Mismatched names across those three documents is the classic warning sign.
How to check it. Open the North Carolina Secretary of State site and run a Business Registration search on the exact legal name. You are looking for a status of Current-Active and a formation date that matches the years of experience they claim. Eastern Oak Roofing LLC is NC Secretary of State SOSID 2852065, Current-Active. For South Carolina work in Fort Mill, Rock Hill, or Indian Land, the entity records live with the South Carolina Secretary of State.
Then look at the review history rather than the review count. Open the Google profile and read the dates. Reviews accumulating steadily over years is a business. Forty reviews inside one week is a campaign. Eastern Oak Roofing LLC currently shows 5.0 across 117 Google reviews, checked 2026-09-10. The Better Business Bureau is worth ten seconds as well, mostly for complaint history rather than the letter grade. Theirs is rating A, accredited since 2025-04-04.
5. Never offers to pay or absorb your insurance deductible
Why it matters. It is a crime, and the exposure is not only theirs.
Worth knowing: In North Carolina, a contractor who pays, waives, or absorbs your insurance deductible to win the job can be charged with insurance fraud under N.C.G.S. 58-2-161, a Class H felony. South Carolina bans it outright in advertising under S.C. Code 40-59-25(E). If a roofer offers to cover your deductible, they are exposing you both. The statute, and how the offer gets disguised.
What to ask. Nothing. There is no version of this question that produces a good answer. If a contractor volunteers that they can make your deductible disappear, or offers to inflate the estimate to swallow it, or calls it a "storm discount" that happens to equal your deductible, that is the entire interview. They have told you how they treat rules that are inconvenient.
How to check it. Read the estimate. If any document offers to waive, rebate, or absorb the deductible, or bundles a gift or a rebate onto an insurance funded job, keep the paper. Report it to your insurance carrier, and in North Carolina to the North Carolina Department of Insurance. In South Carolina, the South Carolina Department of Insurance.
The licensing question in North Carolina, which is not what most people assume
There is no standalone roofing license in North Carolina. People are often surprised by this. What exists is a threshold: any single project at or above $40,000 requires a North Carolina general contractor license, and that threshold rose from $30,000 on October 1, 2023. A large replacement, or a replacement bundled with decking and gutters, can cross it.
So the practical question is not "are you licensed", it is "is this specific job over the threshold, and if it is, whose license number is on the permit". Ask for the number, then look it up on the North Carolina Licensing Board for General Contractors lookup and confirm the status is active and the classification fits the work. For Fort Mill, Rock Hill, Tega Cay, and Indian Land, South Carolina has its own rules and its own public lookup at South Carolina LLR.
One more free check that almost nobody runs: the permit. Roof replacements in the Charlotte metro are permitted, the permit authority changes at the county line, and permit records are public. If a contractor is reluctant to pull one, that tells you something on its own. The permit authority for each town in the metro is listed here.
What we do not claim about this contractor
Being specific about the edges of a claim is more useful than a badge, so here are ours.
- We have not run criminal background checks on individual crew members, and any site telling you it screens every roofer who touches your house is describing something that almost never happens in this trade.
- We have not audited their finances, visited their job sites, or inspected finished work.
- We have not surveyed the Charlotte roofing market, so nothing here is a ranking or a comparison of all local companies.
- We do not warrant their work, their timeline, their pricing, or their conduct. Any contract is between you and them.
- What we do is check public records and documents against the standard above, on a quarterly cadence. Last checked 2026-09-10.
On credentials: Licensing, insurance, and certification information shown here is provided by the contractor. Verify a contractor current license and insurance directly with the state and the insurer before you sign anything.
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