Guaranteed is one of the most reassuring words in lead sales and one of the most misread. Before you pay for a guarantee, it helps to know exactly what it covers, because it is rarely the thing a contractor hopes for.
What the guarantee usually means
In almost every case, a lead guarantee is a replacement policy. If a lead turns out to be a disconnected number, a duplicate, or outside your service area, the seller replaces it or credits your account. That is the whole guarantee. It protects you from obviously broken leads. It does not promise that anyone hires you.
No honest company guarantees jobs, and you should walk away from any that claim to. Whether a homeowner signs depends on your price, your timing, and your crew, none of which a lead seller controls. We do not promise guaranteed leads or jobs either, and the reason is the same: it would not be true.
This is not a hypothetical worry. In 2023 the Federal Trade Commission ordered HomeAdvisor, one of the largest lead sellers in home services, to pay up to 7.2 million dollars after finding it had made misleading claims about the quality and source of the leads it sold, and had overstated how often those leads turned into jobs. A company can be that big and still be penalized for promising more than a lead can deliver. Read any guarantee for what it is: a replacement policy for broken leads, not a promise of work.
The fine print to read
If a guarantee matters to your decision, read these clauses before you sign:
- What counts as a valid lead. Often a lead only qualifies for replacement if it fails narrow tests. A homeowner who answers but is not interested usually still counts as delivered.
- The replacement window. Some policies give you 24 to 72 hours to flag a bad lead. Miss the window and you keep the charge.
- Shared or exclusive. Many guaranteed leads are shared, sold to several contractors at once. The guarantee does nothing about the bidding war that follows. See exclusive roofing leads.
- The cap. Replacements are sometimes capped per month, so a bad batch is only partly covered.
Why guarantees and low-intent leads travel together
A guarantee is a sales tool. It lowers the perceived risk of buying, which lets a seller move leads that would otherwise be a hard sell. The leads that need that help most are the shared, aged, and low-intent ones. A genuinely strong lead does not need a guarantee to sell. So the presence of a loud guarantee is often a signal about lead quality, not a fix for it.
This connects to the real cost problem. A guaranteed shared lead still has a poor close rate, and a replacement credit does not change your cost per acquired job. The math is in how much roofing leads cost.
Questions to ask before you sign
- Is this lead sold to anyone else, and if so, how many?
- What exactly triggers a replacement, and how long do I have to claim it?
- What is your average close rate across contractors in my market?
- What happens to my rate after the introductory period?
If the answers are vague, that is your answer.
The honest alternative
Instead of buying a guarantee on a homeowner who filled out a form, start from the roofs that already have a reason to need you. Roof age from county permits, recent ownership changes, and homes inside a recorded storm core are facts, not promises. They will not guarantee a job. Nothing can. They will put your time on the doors most likely to turn into one. That approach is the subject of the full roofing leads guide.
Keep Reading
- Roofing leads: how they work, what they cost, and a better way to find the right roofsA plain guide to roofing leads for contractors: where they come from, what shared and exclusive leads cost, why most convert poorly, and how to start from property data instead.
- How much do roofing leads cost? Real ranges and the only number that mattersWhat roofing leads actually cost in 2026, from shared to exclusive to storm leads, plus the cost-per-acquired-job math that shows why cheap leads are rarely cheap.
- Exclusive roofing leads: what exclusive should mean and how to verify itExclusive roofing leads cost more and close better, but the word exclusive gets stretched. How to verify real exclusivity, and why market-level exclusivity is the strongest form.