Reviews & references
Every review we have.Nothing we don't.
Underdog started in 2021. One customer wrote us a review we can quote you in full, and it is printed below — we have not edited a word of it. The rest of this page is the honest version of what a review page is supposed to do: show you how to check us out, and how to check out everyone else you are getting a bid from.
Posted by a customer
One review, printed in full.
Sarah left this on Thumbtack in April 2023, after we had finished her roof. It is the only public review of this company that we can point you to, and it is reproduced here exactly as she left it.
We would rather show you one real sentence than twenty that read like they were written by the same person on the same afternoon. If you have hired us and you have something to say — good or otherwise — the link at the bottom of this page goes straight to our Facebook page.
This company was responsive and explained everything that was going on with my roof with pictures as well. Very professional.
The part most companies hide
We are young, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
One written review is not the same thing as one job. It is the number of customers who went back to a website afterwards and typed something in — and almost nobody does that, especially about a roof, which is a thing people are relieved to stop thinking about. We are not going to close the gap between those two numbers with reviews we bought, wrote ourselves, or collected off relatives.
Here is the actual argument for hiring a company at this stage rather than one with a thousand reviews. At our size every single roof is a material share of our reputation. There is no volume to bury a bad job inside. Jorge Marquez owns the company and his is the number you call. If our crew does sloppy work on your house, there is no regional manager to absorb it — it lands on the people whose name is on the truck, and it lands the same week.
That cuts both ways and we know it. A fifteen-year-old franchise can point at a review history we simply do not have yet. What we can do is hand you the things a review is a proxy for: proof of insurance sent to you by our agent, a written line-item scope, photographs of your own roof, and the addresses of jobs we finished near you. Ask us for all four. Ask everyone else for all four too.
Rural Michiana
- Buy, trade, or write reviews
- Offer a discount in exchange for one
- Filter unhappy customers out of a review funnel
- Use stock photography of somebody else’s roof
- Claim a manufacturer certification we have not earned
- Quote a price before we have seen the roof
What every customer gets
Commitments, not testimonials.
None of the following is something a customer said about us. They are things we commit to before the job starts, which is the only version that is any use to you while you are still deciding who to call.
Photographs of your actual roof
Every inspection ends with images of your slopes, your flashing, your valleys — shot by hand and from the air where the pitch makes that safer. You keep them whether or not you hire us. That is the single thing the one review we have singles out, and it is not an accident.
The owner's phone, not a call centre
Jorge Marquez owns the company, and his is the number you call. There is no account manager, no dispatch queue, and no layer between you and the person who is actually responsible for what happens on your roof.
Our own crew on your roof
Everyone who shows up is employed by Underdog. We do not sell your job to a subcontracted crew we have never met, which is the point where quality control quietly disappears at a lot of larger companies.
A written, itemised scope
Tear-off, disposal, underlayment, ice-and-water coverage, flashing, ventilation, the per-sheet rate for bad decking, permits, clean-up. Line items, not a single number. It is the only way a bid can be honestly compared against another one.
An honest read, including “no”
If a repair beats a replacement, we say so and write the smaller invoice. If the roof has ten good years left, we tell you to keep your money. We would rather have the referral in five years than the bigger job today.
We show up when we said we would
If weather or a supplier moves us, you get a call before the window passes rather than an afternoon spent wondering. Storm season strains everyone in this trade; being straight about scheduling is free.
Due diligence
How to vet any roofing contractor — including us.
Run this on every bid you collect. It costs you an afternoon and it is the cheapest insurance available on a project this size. If a contractor gets uncomfortable somewhere around item three, you have learned something worth more than whatever they were about to discount.
Confirm the licence, and check it yourself
Ask for the licence or registration number and the exact legal entity name on it, then verify it with the city or county that issued it rather than accepting a photo of a card. Registration requirements differ from one Michiana municipality to the next, so a contractor legitimately registered in one town is not automatically registered in yours.
Get the insurance certificate from the insurer, not the contractor
You want general liability and workers’ compensation, both current. Ask the contractor to have their agent email the certificate to you directly, with your name listed as certificate holder. A PDF forwarded by the contractor can be expired or altered; one sent by the agency cannot. If someone is injured on your roof and there is no workers’ compensation behind them, that can become your exposure.
Insist on an itemised written scope before you sign anything
“Replace roof — one price” is not a scope. You should see tear-off and disposal, the underlayment type, where ice-and-water shield goes, drip edge, step and counter flashing, pipe boots, ridge and intake ventilation, the per-sheet rate for replacing rotted decking, permits, and clean-up. Two bids only become comparable once both list the same items.
Be suspicious of any large deposit
Shingles are normally delivered on supplier credit a day or two before the job starts, so there is rarely a reason a roofer needs a large share of the contract before work begins. An oversized deposit is often how an underfunded company pays for the previous customer’s materials. A sane schedule ties money to milestones: materials on site, work complete, final inspection passed.
Ask who is physically going to be on the roof
Plenty of companies sell the job and hand it to a subcontracted crew they have never worked with. Ask directly — is the crew employed by you, who is running the job the day it happens, and will anyone on site be able to answer a question for me? A contractor who will not answer that clearly has told you the answer.
Ask for local addresses, not a testimonial page
Anyone can type a testimonial. Ask for three or four recent job addresses near you and drive past them. Look down the ridge line for waviness, look at the valleys and at the flashing where the roof meets a wall, and look at whether the gutters and the landscaping survived the tear-off. If a contractor cannot name a single street in your area where they have worked, they are not local.
Separate the two warranties and get both in writing
The manufacturer warranty covers the shingle. The contractor warranty covers the installation. Almost every roof failure in the first decade is installation rather than material, which makes the workmanship warranty the one that actually matters — and it is worth exactly as much as the odds of that company still existing. Ask how long it runs, what it excludes, and whether it transfers to a buyer.
After a storm, slow everything down
Crews follow hail into Michiana from out of state and are gone before the first winter. Do not sign anything on your porch. Read the top of the page before you sign it — an “authorisation to inspect” is sometimes a contingency contract that binds you to that company if your claim is approved. And any contractor who offers to absorb, discount, or “take care of” your insurance deductible is proposing fraud against your carrier: it is prohibited in many states and it tells you precisely what else they are willing to fudge.
Storm work has its own rules, and the money side of it deserves its own explanation — we wrote both out in full on storm damage & insurance restoration and paying for your roof.
If we have worked on your house
Two sentences from you is worth more to us than any advert we could buy.
Reviews are how a small company stops being a stranger to the next homeowner who picks up the phone. If we did right by you, say so publicly — it genuinely changes who calls us next month. And if we did not, call Jorge Marquez first. We would much rather fix it than read about it.
Common questions
Ask us the awkward ones.
These are the questions we would want answered if we were the ones hiring a roofer, so we answered them the way we would want them answered.
Why does Underdog have so few online reviews?
Because the company started in 2021 and because most people who are happy with a roof never go back to a website to say so. We have one written review we can point you to, and it is on this page word for word. We could have a hundred by Friday if we were willing to buy them, and we are not. Ask us for references and a certificate of insurance instead — those are harder to fake and they tell you more.
Can I talk to a past customer before I hire you?
Yes. Ask, and we will give you addresses of recent jobs near you that you can drive past, plus contact details for homeowners who have agreed in advance to take that call. We will not hand out anybody’s phone number without their permission, which is also the standard you should expect from a company you are about to give your own number to.
Do you offer a discount for leaving a review?
No. Paying for reviews or trading them for money off breaks the rules of every platform that hosts them, runs against Federal Trade Commission guidance on endorsements, and makes every other review on the page worthless to the person reading it. If you want to write one, we would be grateful — and it has no effect on what your roof costs.
What happens if I am not happy with the work?
Call Jorge Marquez directly on (574) 334-6597 and tell him. Our workmanship warranty exists precisely for this and we would rather come back out than have it discussed publicly first — not because we are trying to keep it quiet, but because a fixed problem is a better outcome for you than a review about an unfixed one.
How do I verify that you are licensed and insured?
Ask, and we will have our agent send the certificate of insurance to you directly with your name on it as certificate holder, and give you the licence details to check with the issuing municipality. Do this with every bid you collect, not only ours.
Are the photographs on this website real jobs of yours?
Yes. Every photograph on this site is our own crew on a Michiana roof, including the drone footage — no stock imagery and no borrowed portfolios. If you see a roof in our gallery that looks like the one you need, ask about it and we will tell you where it is.
Free, no-pressure inspection
Check us out properly. Then decide.
Ask for the certificate of insurance. Ask for the addresses. Ask us what we would do if it were our own house. We will answer all three before we ever ask you to sign anything.