The directors of a thermal roof coating company in Tamworth going by the name of Therma Seal UK Ltd were sentenced to 5 years in prison.
The fraudsters names are Christopher Walkins and Alan Wilson. The roof coating duo used pushy sales techniques onto potential customers. The elderly are easily duped and fall prey to these high-pressure sales tactics. Many older adults were parting with thousands of pounds for having their roof painted.
Dudley Council investigated between 2010 – 2012 into the roof coating scammers. They discovered that over 2500 people were scammed nationwide. A 91-year-old lady come forward to complain about Therma Seal. A Therma Seal sales rep told the lady that her home needed reroofing and it would cost approximately £30,000.
The roof coating scammers then told her there roof coating product would cost half of that at £17,000. Within moments that price dropped to £13,000. The amount was lowered to make it look like the elderly lady was getting a good deal even though she wasn’t. The ladies roof did have some minor issues and to have them repaired would cost a little over £1000.
Therma Seal UK Ltd had professionally designed glossy flyers and leaflets. The leaflets were making false claims about their products. They used the flyers to show older adults. The flyers claimed their product could save up to 40% on their energy bills per year. All that was needed was to apply the special thermal paint to their roof tiles.
Unlucky for Therma Seal the University of Salford looked into these misleading claims. The University conducted there own study and could only find a 5.3 thermal resistance (not up to 40% such as claimed by Therma Seal). A far cry from what thermal Seal Ltd was claiming. The thermal roof coating they were selling people was doing very little to retain heat in people’s houses. The claims on their brochures are bogus.