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| - Have been having problems for a couple of weeks with our automatic garage door opener. First sign of trouble was two weeks ago when the door would only open so far as the first joint, then would stop, the lights would flash, and we would have to close and attempt to open it again. Eventually I pushed the door up and down manually a couple of times and the automatic opener started working again.
This morning, my wife called me at work to say that she couldn't get the garage door open. (I hadn't parked in the garage last night, so I didn't know there was a problem.) I ended up coming home, diagnosing that the durn thing was busted, and looking online for a garage door repair place nearby.
I tried calling both Sears and Madison Overhead. M.O. was open, Sears didn't open until 9. Point M.O. I called and made an appointment with M.O. and they were really excited that I had heard of them through a G--gle search, "Yay, it works!"
I called Sears again after 10 am to see if they had a warranty for this opener (it's a Craftsman, was born in 1993, so it was originally sold by Sears)- they had a 1-year guarantee against defects, so I was about 18 years too late. (Wow, my garage door opener is old enough to buy cigarettes, where did the years go!) They offered to come out and take a look...tomorrow. M.O. 2, Sears 0. Sears said they have a minimum service call fee of $74.99 (M.O. has an $80 flat fee for everything including labor and service call, I would just have to pay for the parts).
The Sears employee I talked to was really helpful and suggested that I take the housing cover off and see if the plastic gear inside of the housing was stripped (I did, it was), and if so, I could order the part for installation myself. Before shipping and tax, the part was $70 from Sears. I found the same part online for $12-$25.
After much hemming and hawing and questioning my own manhood, "I could do this, but my hands would get all greasy, plus it's about 20 degrees outside now..." I decided that I was an enlightened male, and I didn't have to fix it myself.
The Madison Overhead tech, Dan, called at 2:04 pm (they scheduled the appointment for between 2 and 4 pm today) to say he was on his way. He was here, showed me what was wrong, and also found two other issues that I wouldn't have even known to look for. He replaced both the stripped gear (the $25 part) and the sprocket (together, about $38 online), and adjusted the tension in the torsion spring that counterbalances the garage door.
He was friendly, fast, and good at his job. The door works great now- he lubricated all the joints too, so it's a lot quieter- and it took him about an hour and twenty minutes from start to finish. Best of all, our cars can sleep snugly in the garage tonight!
Had I done this repair myself, I wouldn't have known how to adjust the spring tension or even that it wasn't adjusted right in the first place. The fact that the door was way too heavy was probably a contributing factor to the gear stripping in the first place (that, the fact that it's 18 year-old-plastic, lives in a garage ranging from 100 degrees in the summer to -20 in the winter...and its smoking habit). I could have ended up taking the whole assembly apart, replacing just the old gear, put everything back together, just to have the new gear strip in a week or month or year from now because I didn't diagnose the tension problem.
For other manly men (and/or women) trying to decide whether to go it alone or to hire somebody, yes it will cost more to hire somebody, but they will do it right, the first time, and you will get security with your repair.
I highly recommend Madison Overhead for all your garage door repairs and replacement. I give them full marks for service, punctuality, knowledge, and quality. I dinged them just a bit for the cost of the repair (they are definitely competitive compared to Sears, but you could do it a lot cheaper yourself).
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