When a product is guaranteed you're covered, right? Not always. Chris Olsen has a reality check.

Ed Calderwood's roof is peeling. It began flaking not long after it was put on.

"A year later it started blowing off -- two years later more of it came off and it was all over my lawn and my neighbour's lawn," Calderwood said. "It was a big job to pick it all up."

The ceramic-surface–over-asphalt roof had cost over more than $7,000 and came with a conditional lifetime guarantee that was supposed to cover peeling.

When Calderwood called to complain, a salesman came out to have a look.

"He climbed up on the roof and had a look and said ‘Yes about 50 per cent of it is blown off, so we'll send someone around to fix it.' Nobody ever showed up," Calderwood said.

So CTV's Chris Olsen paid a visit to the company Viscount Research and Manufacturing. No one answered the phone or the door. But a sign on the door said Viscount was a Better Business Bureau member.

The BBB will mediate between consumers and a business. But accreditation does not guarantee the product will work.

"We're not the experts on that, all we can say is, is this business going to support the customer when things go wrong?" Lynda Pasacreta of the BBB explained.

And when the company didn't support customers like Calderwood, its BBB membership was revoked.

Company owner Brian Anderson sent a letter to CTV News saying "We profoundly regret what happened and have responded to the extent possible."

The letter says "We did not make the products but installed products made by other companies."

That's no comfort to Ed Calderwood, who faces a $15,000 re-roofing job.

"The company shouldn't be able to get away with doing things this way, especially when they give you a lifetime guarantee on the material," he said.

He's considering going to small claims court -- an option of last resort available to all consumers.

Something to keep in mind about warranties or guarantees: They are most often only as good as the company doing the work. So if you are told about a warranty as part of a sales pitch, ask a lot of tough questions.

With a report for CTV British Columbia's Chris Olsen.