LESLIE: Craig in North Carolina, you are on The Money Pit. What can we do for you?
CRAIG: I have Masonite siding on my house and it’s deteriorating in several spots. And from what I understand, there’s a process which I can go through to retrieve some money from the manufacturer for replacement of the Masonite siding. And I hear there’s an 800 number or a web page or something like that that might give me information on what I can do. Thought maybe you might have some insight on that.
TOM: There are several class action suits going on across the country. Some of them the claim dates have passed on and some of them are still active. So it depends on what type you have. There is a good website called ClaimSourceOne.com. It has a lot of information on ….
LESLIE: Tom, is it the number one or are you spelling out one?
TOM: O-n-e. No, o-n-e.
LESLIE: OK.
TOM: They’re based out of Atlanta. They have a lot of information about the various sorts of claims that are available to be filed. And I think that they’re a service that sort of does this as a business so they try to get the money back for you and probably get a percentage. I may be wrong about that. But I will tell you that of all the sites out there, they seem to spell it out the best. So you can take a look.
But conceptually, that composite siding has been having a lot of issues. And you know, generally what happens is the surface of the siding breaks down either from nails that go through it and then water gets in there then it swells up. So, you know, I used to tell my clients, when I was in the home inspection business, that it’d be fine as long as you painted it everyday before you went to work. (Leslie chuckles) You know? But it really is not very durable stuff and by the time it starts to get past the eight to ten-year-old range it really starts to break down pretty rapidly. So you know you’ve got a siding replacement job in your future one way or the other.
CRAIG: Is there a way that I can find the manufacturer without actually tearing the Masonite off the side and looking on the back?
TOM: I think that you could probably identify it through photographs. And I’m sure that there are ways to do that because, you know, every one of these has been very well documented at this point in time. And frankly, even if you tore it off you may not find it on the back anyway. So, check out that website. I think that’ll be a good place for you to start. ClaimSourceOne.com.
CRAIG: Great. Thank you very much for your help.
TOM: You’re very welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
Leave a Reply