Thanks for the photo.
I can tell you what happened, and that it is an installation error, the roofer needs to correct it. It is not a manufacturing defect.
The top few courses you say?
Those would be the shingle bundles stacked near (probably on) the ridge and the ones which stayed there the longest. They were probably even 'folded' over the ridge some from setting there.
When the sun heated the shingles up, the sealant strip stuck to the plastic strip, and when the shingles were separated and pulled apart, the plastic strip stuck to the sealant strip on the shingle below instead of to the underside of the shingle above.
Manufacturing defect? Sure, in that the plastic strip should has stuck to the underside of the shingle above.
Installation defect? Sure, the installer should have looked where they were nailing and said 'Whoa ... Hey, Joe, lookeehere, make sure you pull these plastic strips off before you nail the shingles in place.', but old Joe is smarter than that, he can read, and it says "DO NOT REMOVE", so he did not.
Okay, now fast forward to today ... who is responsible?
The manufacturer? They will acknowledge the defect, and say the installer should have caught it. The installer should have.
The installer? They will say 'But it says right there "DO NOT REMOVE", so we did not.'
Who is at fault? The manufacturer gets 50% of the responsibility assigned to them, the installer gets 50% of the responsibility assigned to them, then, the installer "should have read the installation instructions and should have known how to install shingles (or not be installing shingles), so the installer should have, at a minimum, checked with *someone* to find out what to do if they did not know what to do (and, apparently, they did not know what to do), so, for their lack of 'finding out what needs to be done and making that decision themselves', the installers assume at least 50% of the manufacturers responsibility.
End result: The installer would have "at least" a 75% responsibility for the problem (in my book, they assume all of the manufacturers responsibility because *they should have know what to do*, or, *they should have called someone to find out what to do*), leaving the manufacturer with (at most) 25% responsibility.
The manufacturer sends out, at no charge, 25% of the number of shingles involved, with the installers picking up the tab for the other 75% of the shingles and all the labor.
Yeah, right. But that's how it *should* work out.
P.S., without the photos, what I now think happened never entered my thoughts. Shame on me for jumping the gun.
