Michigan Door-To-Door Roofing Sales Rules: Your 3-Day Right to Cancel and More

Michigan's Home Solicitation Sales Act is 1971 PA 227, codified at MCL 445.111 to 445.117. Section 1 defines a home solicitation sale as a sale of goods or services of more than $25 in which the seller, or someone acting for the seller, solicits the sale in person, by phone or in writing, the buyer receives that solicitation at home, and the buyer's agreement or offer to purchase is given there. A roof repair or replacement sold by a canvasser who knocks, and signed on your porch, fits that description on its face.

The definition turns on how the sale happened, not on what the document is titled. A form labeled an inspection agreement, an authorization or a work order is still an agreement to buy services if it obligates you to pay. Whether a particular form is a binding sale can be a legal question; the point is that a title alone doesn't take a signed agreement outside the act.

The act lists exclusions. The ones that matter for roofing are a sale made at the seller's fixed place of business, a sale made pursuant to prior negotiations at a business establishment at a fixed location, and a sale made pursuant to a printed advertisement in a publication of general circulation. If you visited a roofer's office, negotiated there and later signed at home, the analysis may be different. A postcard asking you to call counts as a written solicitation under the act unless it states the price and accurately describes the work.

Section 2 (MCL 445.112) gives the buyer the right to cancel until midnight of the third business day after the day the buyer signs. Section 1 defines a business day as Monday through Friday, not counting New Year's Day, Martin Luther King's birthday, Washington's birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sign on a Friday and the clock runs Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so the deadline is midnight Wednesday.

Storm damage creates real emergencies, and the act allows for them. Under MCL 445.112(5), you may not cancel if you asked the seller to provide goods or services without delay because of an emergency, and all of these are true: the seller in good faith made a substantial beginning of performance before you canceled; you gave the seller a separate, dated and signed personal statement in your own handwriting describing the situation requiring immediate remedy and expressly acknowledging and waiving the 3-day right; and, for goods, they can't be returned in substantially as good condition.

The request has to come from you, not the salesperson. The waiver has to be in your handwriting, on a separate paper, describing your situation; a pre-printed waiver paragraph in the contract is not what the statute describes. And the work has to have actually started. In practice, an emergency tarp to stop water coming into a bedroom is the kind of job this exception was written for. A full roof replacement sold at the door the day after a storm usually is not an emergency in the statute's sense, even if it feels urgent.

The federal rule has a similar exclusion, limited to sales where the buyer initiated the contact for a bona fide immediate personal emergency and gave the same kind of handwritten waiver.

Two short sections give the act teeth. Section 7 (MCL 445.117) says no person may bring an action in a Michigan court to collect on a home solicitation sale contract without proving that they were at all times in compliance with the act. Section 6 (MCL 445.116) lets a buyer set off refunds or penalties the act provides against what the seller claims, and raise them as a defense, without regard to the act's time limits.

The Michigan Consumer Protection Act also reaches these sales. MCL 445.903(1)(gg) lists violating the Home Solicitation Sales Act in connection with a home solicitation sale as an unfair practice, including having a courier pick up a payment during the cancellation period. Subdivision (u) covers failing to promptly restore a deposit or other payment after a lawful cancellation. The Attorney General's Consumer Protection Team takes complaints at 877-765-8388.

One pattern after storms: a salesperson asks you to sign something so they can meet your adjuster or start the claim. Under Michigan's Insurance Code, MCL 500.1222, a person may not adjust loss or damage under an insurance policy, or hold themselves out as an adjuster, without an adjuster license, and the state won't license an adjuster who is connected with a fire repair contractor (MCL 500.1224(4)). The statute doesn't draw a precise line between explaining a repair estimate and adjusting a claim; DIFS is the agency to ask.

In 2024 the Attorney General sued a group of out-of-state and Michigan storm-chasing tree service companies, alleging they misled consumers about the nature of the agreements they were signing, the cost, potential responsibility for costs not covered by insurance, and their legal rights. The suit was over tree work, not roofing, but the alleged pattern is the one to watch for at the door. The Attorney General's advice after storms is to contact your insurer, speak to a local licensed professional, check credentials and references, get more than one written estimate even when you expect insurance to pay, and read any contract carefully before signing or paying a deposit.