There are a few common tricks that a crooked garage door guy will use to upsell unnecessary parts, or make you think you need a new door or opener.
- Blaming safety eye problems on the circuit board
- Scaring you about future problems that probably won’t ever happen (the odds are on your side)
- Blaming broken springs on other parts as an excuse to replace extra stuff
- Refusing to add tension to torsion springs after pointing out that the door feels too heavy
- Blaming stripped opener gears and trolleys on other parts (it’s not even true 10% of the time)
- Making you wait for repair parts that they should have with them to encourage you to buy a new door or opener today
- Upselling expensive “premium” parts that make no difference in how your door works or sounds
- Adding surcharges and fees at the end
Garage door companies that rip off their customers all tend to be very short sighted – they believe in getting as much money as possible in one trip, then hopefully never see you again. They take advantage of your lack of knowledge about garage doors. Just being aware of these scams could save you hundreds of dollars.
Flat out lying about the diagnosed problem with your garage door system is probably the most common technique. Some companies even train their people to believe falsehoods so they can upsell with a clear conscience, making them seem honest. The best protection against this is troubleshooting your door so that you have an idea what is going on with it. Here are some of the most common misdiagnosis scams:
Blaming safety eye problems on the circuit board
If your door won’t shut unless you hold down the wall control (check to make sure the door is not blocked by anything first), the problem is pretty much guaranteed to be the safety eyes. Either they are misaligned, obstructed, in the direct sunlight, or there is a problem with the wiring (check any splices and connections).
If your garage door only shuts when you hold the button down, but it opens just fine, a good technician will know where to look and spend a few minutes tracking down the source of the problem. Once in a while, the eyes themselves are defective, but it is virtually never the circuit board.
A scammer will tell you it is the circuit board, that it will need to be ordered (a week out at least), it’s over $250 with labor, and there is a $90 service charge today and when he comes back to put it in. Plus the time and hassle of another appointment. But he can put a new opener in today for $600. He could have just rewired a couple connections and charged you a service charge, but he got greedy (or he may have a lot of pressure on him to keep his sales numbers up).
Scaring you about future problems
There are a lot of garage door companies out there that base their entire business model on advertising low prices to get into your garage, then upselling. Frightening people about future problems and the danger they create is one of the most effective tactics to get you to buy a new door or replace all of the parts on your current door (commonly referred to as a “rebuild” or “overhaul”). Many times, these overhaul packages are outrageously priced and completely unnecessary.
Blaming broken springs on other parts
The scary part here is that a lot of garage door technicians are incompetent and actually believe that having “low quality” or “builder’s grade” rollers and bearings will make your spring work harder and break sooner. This is complete nonsense; your spring is set to a specific tension and that’s how hard it works. It breaks because of metal fatigue. Each time you open your door, your spring turns seven or eight times. Eventually a weak spot develops, and it breaks. It breaks from usage, that’s it. The more you use your garage door, the quicker the springs will break.
Real Life Example: One big company trains its new technicians to believe that the common cheap black plastic rollers that come on most steel doors cause the springs to break early because they don’t roll well enough. Maybe they aren’t quite as smooth as the wildly overpriced “premium” rollers, but that has nothing to do with the spring breaking at all.
It is, of course, possible that your rollers, bearings, cables, bottom brackets, or hinges may need to be replaced. A good technician should have no trouble showing you how and why the part is worn or damaged. Whatever the case, don’t let them use some random part on the door being worn as an excuse to change your springs out. The only reason to change the springs out preemptively is if you think that they may be close to breaking from total usage and you wish to save the service charge and hassle of waiting for it to happen, requiring another visit.
And remember, as long as the force setting on your garage door opener is set properly, nothing too dangerous or damaging can really happen unless you are incredibly unlucky.
Refusing to add tension to torsion springs
This is another highly effective rip off technique. During an inspection of your garage door, a dishonest technician will show you how the door, when operated manually, won’t hold itself open. He picks it up to waste high, then lets it fall to the ground hard. He claims the springs have lost their tension.
But, unfortunately, it is unsafe to add tension, he says. You must replace the springs instead. Oh, and the reason these springs lost their tension is because they were working too hard from the cheap rollers and bearings that came on the door….and your opener is probably been working way too hard this whole time, too, maybe you should think about replacing that too…
The truth is that it is perfectly safe for a professional to add tension to torsion springs. But, it may cause the springs to break a little bit sooner than they otherwise would. And if your door is only a little bit heavy, it probably won’t hurt anything anyway, most common garage door openers can handle it.
Blaming stripped gears and trolley teeth on other parts
There are two common opener failures that probably account for more service calls than all the others combined: The stripped gear/broken sprocket on Chamberlain manufactured (includes Liftmaster and Sears/Craftsman brand) chain drive openers, and the stripped out trolley teeth on Genie/Overhead Door screwdrive openers.
Most of the time, this is the result of age and total usage. About 15 years of normal usage would be the average life expectancy for either part.
Before you believe that the failure of one of these parts is the result of something larger that needs to be addressed, feel how the door operates manually. If it is relatively easy to lift and smooth, it’s probably just the result of age and usage.
On the flip side of this, make sure that a badly out of balance door is addressed when you are having the trolley or gears replaced. I do occasionally see doors that run so badly that it did cause the failure, but it is less than 10% of the time. Most of the time it is just old age and accumulated usage.
Making you wait for a second trip
Make sure to troubleshoot your garage door system before you start calling around so that you can confirm that the company you call carries the parts you are likely to need. Some guys intentionally don’t carry common parts so that they can tell you that a new opener can go in today, but your relatively minor repair will be two weeks because of the order time.
Claiming to have “Premium” parts
For the most part, every company carries the same stuff. You can tell a torsion spring’s expected cycle life by its dimensions, so don’t worry about fancy coatings or terminology. A good rule of thumb is that a “high cycle” spring must be at least 30 inches long on light weight doors, and 35 inches on heavy doors. The longer the spring the longer its expected life. And while there are several grades of rollers, an 11-bearing nylon roller is just fine for most doors, and there is nothing that makes a set of rollers worth over $200. The rest of the stuff is all pretty much the same from one company to the next, so don’t pay hundreds of extra dollars to have your door upgraded to “premium” parts, it doesn’t really matter.
Adding surcharges and fees
This is a common trick in the service industry in general. At the end, the bill has gone up by $20 because of fuel, environmental, and disposal charges and fees that were not disclosed at the beginning. Contest these and they will probably be waived.