The MacDeskBlog

One of the contacts that I made through my incompetent former contractor was with a custom garage door manufacturer. The company had a nice selection of door styles and options and built each door to fit. They also offered a heavy discount for cash transactions, and I’m talking heavy. They built and installed my garage door back in 2003, and I was pleased.

So, when it came time to uninstall the garage door prior to jackhammering out the bad foundation in March of this year, I called them. They uninstalled the door and the opener for $100 and told me it would cost $400 to reinstall everything when I was ready. $400 seemed rather steep to me, but last week, when I was ready to have the door reinstalled, I called them up and scheduled it for Monday of this week. I was again quoted $400 for the installation.

Monday arrived, and the installer called me at 7AM. Maybe he thought he was calling a contractor, who would probably be up and about at 7AM, so I cut him some slack. Then he calls me back at 9AM to inform me that installing the garage door opener will cost extra (!) as well as “re-scribing” the door. He wants an extra $250 on top of the $400 I was quoted twice. So I hung up on him and called the office. I talked the office down from $650 to $600 and grudgingly rescheduled the installation for Tuesday morning. The installer had left instructions with my carpenter on some small framing changes which needed to be made before the installation.

When the phone rang Tuesday morning at 7AM, I didn’t answer it and the company didn’t leave a message. My carpenter had finished the framing when the installer arrived again. This time the installer said that part of the foundation needs to be chipped out in order for him to install the door and complained that the work had not already been completed though he had not said anything about it on Monday. Further, he said something about them not being interested in coming back again to do the work after Tuesday. We had to chip out the foundation then and there or he wouldn’t do the work!

When my carpenter called me to inform me of this, I told him to rudely toss the guy off my property.

Unfortunately, this means that I need to learn how to properly install a garage door, and probably need to tap some of the screws/bolts into the concrete. But I’m willing to take that responsibility on in order to avoid doing business with a company which tries to rape its customers like this.

A business really should honor its commitments such as the price it quotes for work. Further, if they require particular preparation be completed prior to their own work, they need to ensure that they make all of those requirements explicitly known. It should be entirely obvious that businesses should always (and I mean ALWAYS) treat their customers with the utmost respect.

The company who did this to me is City Overhead Doors on Mission St in San Francisco. I strongly discourage anyone from doing business with them.