Oh, how I hate to pay for something unnecessarily.
Months ago, Dan bought us a new garage door opener. It’s unlike the current opener in that a) it isn’t rusted and rickety; b) it has more than one remote; and c) it has safety sensors – you know, those things that are REQUIRED BY CODE so that your kid, cat, dog, neighbor, etc. doesn’t get squished by the door?
With all of the cold weather, Dan hasn’t had the opportunity to install the new opener. (Okay, he probably has, but whatever.) Until this week. It was a bigger job than past replacements because the existing unit was so old. We had to wire in an outlet and put in the senors. Oh, and Dan had to install a new bracket of some type. Harder, but not too hard.
Almost finished, Dan came in last night defeated. The door wouldn’t open more than 3 feet. He adjusted it several ways, and maxed the pulling power, but still it wouldn’t work. His thought was that the door wasn’t balanced properly. There’s a test for that before you start your opener installation and the test met with only so-so results. Giving the situation the benefit of the doubt, Dan forged ahead with the installation. Things were looking good up until the end last night.
Not knowing what else to do, I called the garage door people this morning. I explained the situation to the man on the phone and asked if they could help. “We can come look at it,” was his answer. “How much and when,” were my basic questions. He said there was a $45 charge to come look at it and then parts and labor were on top of that. They’d be here this afternoon.
I didn’t think that sounded too bad.
A nice guy showed up around 4:30. He tested the door and immediately said it was the opener that needed to be adjusted. He borrowed one of Dan’s screwdrivers, gave a little turn here, a little turn there and it was working.
I was happy to have it working, but thought to myself, “bummer we’re spending $45 on something we could have figured out ourselves.” I knew, too, that Dan would be mad – mostly at himself. Not the best way to start the weekend.
Then nice man then sprayed the garage door springs with some WD-40 and advised that we do that once a year. (I thought he was being extra nice since he was going to charge me $45 for doing basically nothing.)
Then he handed me a bill for NINETY-FIVE F*CKING DOLLARS.
$45 for the call
$45 for the “labor”
$5 fuel surcharge
He was here 10 minutes and he used OUR screwdriver. It took him longer to write up the invoice than it did to “fix” the door.
Now Dan is more than pissed.
Happy Friday, everyone.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Caroline // Mar 20, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Years ago in our other house the garage door opener thingy broke and our cars were stuck inside. Needing to go to work the next day we had to call and get help. Apparently night time is overtime and we couldn’t wait so they factored that in I am sure…it was equally outrageous to have it fixed. I’m sorry….that really sucks!
2 Gwen // Mar 21, 2009 at 9:40 am
Maybe you should charge them a $95 screwdriver rental fee. How dumb. But glad the kids/pets won’t be squished!
3 Maddog // Mar 21, 2009 at 2:12 pm
When in CA we had an old buick. The motor would kill (argh!) but when it sat for awhile it would restart. I don’t know how much time I spent on foot and how many $$ at the repair shop. Nothing worked. I finally discovered that the prob. was that a pin hole in a little 4-in. hose squirted steam up into the distributor only when the radiator was hot. Final fix: $10. for a new hose.
Leave a Comment