The warranty callback three years later is about a customer coming back. Same person, same address, older problem, and your record either holds up or it does not.
This is the version where the person is different. The house sold. Somebody you have never spoken to now owns the address on your invoice, and they are calling because a roofer told them there is an issue, or because a leak appeared, or because the sale paperwork mentioned work and they want to know what was done.
It is a call most companies handle badly, and not out of carelessness. The record was built to answer "what did we do here," and the question being asked is "what may I be told about work done for somebody else."
Sort out who is asking before you answer anything
The first instinct is to be helpful. Resist it for ninety seconds.
Your record belongs to the job, and the job was for a customer who is not the person on the phone. Video of the inside of a house, audio of a driveway conversation, notes about what the previous owner said — none of that stops being the previous owner's business because the deeds changed hands.
So establish three things before you send anything.
Who they are and what they own. A name and the address is the minimum. You are not running a title search; you are making sure you are not handing a recording of somebody's home to a person who read the address off a sign.
What they are actually asking for. Usually it is narrower than it sounds. "Did you replace the whole roof or just the north slope" is a question you can answer in a sentence without sending any media at all. Answer the question they have rather than reaching for the file.
Whether media is needed to answer it. Often it is not, and that resolves the whole problem.
What you can generally say, and what needs the old customer
A workable line, and I would rather state it as a default than as a rule, because circumstances vary and this is not legal advice.
Facts about your own work are usually fine to state. You did a job at that address on that date, the scope was this, the warranty terms are these, it has this long left to run. That is your business record and the new owner has a legitimate interest in it, particularly where a warranty transfers.
The media generally is not. A recorded walkthrough contains more than the work. It contains the interior, the conversation, sometimes family members. Sending that to a stranger because they now own the building is not the same act as confirming a service date.
When in doubt, go back to the original customer. A short call or email — somebody who bought the house is asking about the work we did, are you comfortable with us sharing the walkthrough — resolves it cleanly and takes five minutes. The reflex is the same one in when the customer asks you to send it on: the person with standing to share a record of a property is the person it was made for.
If you cannot reach them, you can still answer the factual half.
Write down that the call happened
Whatever you decide, record the decision. Date, who called, what they asked, what you provided, what you withheld and why.
This matters more here than on an ordinary records request, because the situation has two parties with competing interests in the same file. If the previous owner ever asks whether you gave their footage to the new one, a line in the log is the difference between an answer and a memory. Who was present and when makes the general case; this is the specific one where it bites.
The detail that decides how this goes: retention
Here is the thing that catches people out. Property changes hands on a timescale that outruns most retention windows.
Recordings are kept on a schedule tied to the plan — ninety days, one year, three years are the usual shapes. A house that sells four years after the work was done will frequently have no footage left, and that is the system working as designed rather than a loss. Deleting on a schedule is the whole point of having one.
What you want to avoid is discovering the window during the phone call, mid-sentence. Know which one you are on, and be able to say "our recordings are kept for a year, so I do not have video from 2023, but here is the job record" without hesitating. How long to keep inspection photos works through choosing the window in the first place.
The job record — dates, scope, who did it, warranty terms — should outlive the media. Those are business records, they are small, and they answer most of these calls on their own.
The new owner is a lead, if you treat them properly
Worth saying, because the defensive framing above can make this sound like a nuisance call.
Somebody who just bought a house and is trying to understand its history is a person who will need a roofer within a few years and has no relationship with one. Handling their call carefully — answering what you can, explaining clearly what you cannot and why, without sounding like you are hiding something — is a better introduction than any marketing you will do this quarter.
The sentence that does the work: "I can tell you what we did and when, and the warranty details. The video of the inspection belongs to the previous owner and includes the inside of the house, so I would need their say-so on that. Let me ask them."
That is a company being careful with records, demonstrated rather than asserted. Nobody hears it as obstruction.
If they want to understand what your records actually consist of, what happens to the video afterward is written for exactly that reader. The access and retention model is on the security page.
InspectStream records what an inspector observed. It is not a public adjusting service and does not prepare, negotiate, or advise on insurance claims.