Nothing on your roof will get worse in the ten business days the law gives you to cancel. That single fact defeats almost every pitch delivered on a Berwick doorstep, because urgency is the product being sold. The tiles are not going to fail this week. The offer that expires tonight is the only thing that expires tonight.
Some door-knocking operators are legitimate. Plenty are not, and Berwick’s mix of established 1990s estates and newer builds makes it a regular stop for crews working a suburb for a fortnight before moving on. The checks below take about 20 minutes, and they sort one from the other.
Is door-knocking for roof restoration legal in Victoria?
Door-knocking for roofing work is legal in Victoria, but regulated. Under the Australian Consumer Law, salespeople may only knock from 9 am to 6 pm on weekdays and 9 am to 5 pm on Saturdays, never Sundays or public holidays. They must show identification, state their purpose, and leave immediately if asked. Anyone asked to leave cannot return for 30 days.
Anything that arrives outside those hours is a breach before a word is spoken about your roof, and it matters later because breaches extend your right to cancel well past the standard window.
Can you cancel a roof restoration contract you signed at the door?
Yes. An agreement made after an uninvited approach is an unsolicited consumer agreement, and you can cancel it within 10 business days for any reason, without penalty. During that period, the trader must not accept payment from you and must not start the work. If they breach the conduct rules, your cancellation window is longer.
The extensions are worth knowing before you conclude that you have missed your chance.
| Your cancellation window | When it applies |
| 10 business days | Standard cooling-off for any unsolicited consumer agreement; no reason required. |
| 3 months | The trader knocked outside permitted hours, did not show ID, did not explain the purpose of the visit, or refused to leave when asked. |
| 6 months | The trader did not tell you in writing about your cooling-off right, or the written agreement was missing required information. |
Cancel in writing, keep a copy, and note the date you sent it. A phone call is valid but proves nothing later.
The payment rule is the one that catches people out in both directions. If a crew took a deposit on the spot and started work the next morning, that is not a sign they are keen. It is a breach of the cooling-off provisions, and it is a reason to stop and get advice from Consumer Affairs Victoria rather than to keep going.
The five checks to run before you sign
Run them in this order. The first two take five minutes on your phone and knock out most of the problem.
1. Check the registration on the BPC register.
Building practitioner registration in Victoria is now handled by the Building and Plumbing Commission, which replaced the Victorian Building Authority on 1 July 2025 and holds the public register of registered practitioners. Search the name of the company on the quote, not the name of the person at the door.
Here is the nuance almost no consumer guide mentions. Domestic building work over $10,000 must be carried out by a registered builder. A great many roof restorations come in under that, which means registration may not legally be required for the job you are being quoted. So the check is not simply “are they registered”. It is:
- If the quote is over $10,000, registration is required. No registration means walking away.
- If the quote is under $10,000, registration is a strong positive signal rather than a legal test, and its absence needs to be covered off by the other four checks.
2. Check the ABN and how old it is.
Search the ABN on the quote through the Australian Business Register’s ABN Lookup. You are checking three things: that the ABN is active, that the registered entity name matches the name on the quote, and the date the ABN was registered. An ABN registered eleven weeks ago, attached to a business trading in your street today, is telling you something about how long they intend to be reachable.
If there is no ABN on the paperwork at all, you are not looking at a quote. You are looking at a note.
3. Ask for the insurance certificates, not the insurance claim.
Two different things get called “insured” at the door.
- Public liability covers damage they cause to your property. Ask for the certificate of currency. Check the insurer, policy number and expiry date. Also, check that the insured entity name matches the ABN you just looked up.
- Home Warranty replaced Domestic Building Insurance on 1 July 2026. It is mandatory for domestic building work valued over $20,000, on homes up to three storeys, and your builder must take it out on your behalf — you should receive a notice of cover. Note the gap: a roof restoration between $16,000 and $20,000 required insurance under the old scheme and requires none under the new one. If the quote sits in that range, public liability and the other four checks are carrying all the weight.
A verbal “Yeah, we’re fully insured” is worth nothing. A certificate emailed to you while you stand there is worth a lot, and a legitimate operator will not blink at the request.
4. Check the deposit against the legal cap.
How much deposit can a roofer legally ask for in Victoria? Under section 11 of the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995, a builder must not demand or receive a deposit of more than 10% where the contract price is under $20,000, or 5% where it is $20,000 or more. On a $12,000 roof restoration, that is a maximum of $1,200.
An operator asking for 30 or 50% upfront to “cover materials” is asking you to fund their business and carry the risk of them not returning. This one is not a judgement call. It is an offence.
5. Ask for a Berwick job you can drive past.
Not photos. An address. Any operator who has genuinely worked in this area can name a street in Berwick, Beaconsfield or Narre Warren where the roof is finished and visible from the footpath. If every reference is interstate, or the answer is that privacy prevents them from sharing addresses, you have your answer.
Be careful about who you let onto your roof for a “free inspection”. A stranger on your tiles is unsupervised on the one part of your house you cannot see, and cracked tiles photograph the same whether they cracked last winter or four minutes ago. If you want an inspection, invite someone you chose. Do not accept one from someone who chose you.
Reading the quote itself
A real roof restoration quote is boring. It is a list of specific things done to specific parts of the roof, with quantities. A door-knock quote is often one line, a big number and a discount.
| Line item that should be there | What it should specify | What its absence usually means |
| Tile replacement | Tile profile and colour, and an allowance for a stated number of tiles | They have not been on the roof, or broken tiles will become a variation later. |
| Re-bedding | Which ridges and hips are being re-bedded, in linear metres | The old bedding is staying, and the ridge caps will move again. |
| Re-pointing | Flexible pointing compound named, colour specified, linear metres | Sand and cement, or a thin skim over failed bedding. |
| Valley irons | Whether valleys are being replaced or left, and the material | The valleys are staying, which is where most tile roofs actually leak. |
| Cleaning and preparation | Method and treatment of moss and lichen before coating | Pressure only, with a coating going over live growth. |
| Coating system | Product brand, primer and number of top coats | One thin coat, which is why the colour fades within two summers. |
| Gutters and downpipes | Whether they are cleaned, repaired, or excluded | Debris from the job is being left in your gutters. |
| Warranty | Years, what it covers, and the entity honouring it | A warranty attached to a business that may not exist next winter. |
Three phrases should slow you right down.
- “We’re already in the street, so we can do yours at cost.” Roofing crews do not lose money on a job for the convenience of not driving. This is a discount frame, and it works because it feels like luck rather than a pitch.
- “Your neighbour’s already signed up.” Sometimes true, and irrelevant either way. Your neighbour ran the same 20 minutes of checks you are running now, or they did not.
- “We can start tomorrow.” Any competent roofer in the south-east has work booked. Immediate availability in the middle of a busy season is a fact about their order book, and it is worth asking about directly rather than treating it as good service.
What to say at the door
The rules are the easy part. Saying no to someone on your porch is the hard part, so have the words ready.
“Thanks, I’m not signing anything today. Leave the written quote with your ABN and company name on it, and I’ll be in touch if I’m interested.”
That is it. It is polite, it ends the conversation, and it produces the one document you need to run every check above. If they will not leave paperwork with a company name and an ABN on it, the visit has already told you everything.
Then, if you were considering the work anyway, get two more quotes from operators you found rather than operators who found you. A restoration you actually need will still be worth doing in a fortnight.
If you have already signed
Write the cancellation today, keep a copy, and send it in a way you can prove. Do not wait for the crew to arrive to raise it. If work has already started, or money has already changed hands within the cooling-off period, contact Consumer Affairs Victoria before you pay anything further, and take photographs of the state of the roof before anyone touches it again.
If the work is genuinely needed, get an independent inspection from a local roofer with a fixed address and let them tell you what the roof actually requires. Often, the honest scope is smaller and cheaper than the one sold at the door, and occasionally it is larger. Either way, you will know, which is the thing the doorstep never gives you.