Quote:
Originally Posted by foxmeadow
My garage door would not close with the remotes. It only closed if I held the down button from inside the garage. It would go up ok with the remotes. Nothing was blocking the sensors, so I needed someone to come and fix it. In checking the yellow pages I found a company called "Discount Garage Doors". I liked the DISCOUNT part I guess. At any rate I called to have a service person come. I was quoted a $35 service charge....not too bad! The service man came as scheduled. He immediately knew that the sensors were bad. Within 10 mins he had the new ones in and the door operating just fine. When he presented the bill, I nearly flipped...$206.51 total. Well I paid, but he understood my discontent. I went on-line to see what normal costs should be for the sensors...$43 for the set and that is retail. Their charge for the same exact sensors was $158. I have called the office twice to see about getting something back and each time I was told that the Manager will call me back. NOTHING YET! In so far as their service invoice is preprinted with cost of parts, I checked further online for costs of other parts. They are 3 to 5 times greater in cost than a common purchaser can buy the parts for. Not to mention they charge $85/hr minimum labor cost.
My intent here is to let all potential customers know what they are getting into if they use DGD (Discount Garage Doors, Inc.)
Also I should have checked with the Viginia Trace website as they have recommended repair specialists with an excellent following of satisfied customers.
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This is a very typical type of scam- I call it the "40 dollar an hour scam". If you go and call a bunch of places to have work done...on anything...you'll get one place that is 60 bucks an hour and another place that is 40 bucks an hour, so you think to yourself- 40 is less than 60, so thats the better deal. But ask yourself this: In todays world, do you know of any service business that can really survive on 40 dollars an hour? So what happens? you get suckered in by the low hourly rate ( which is what they want), then they have to kill you on parts and other stuff, or work and parts you dont need, to stay in business. Now I know some of you will beat me up on this, but it true in many forms of businesses and the phrase " you get what you pay for" should ring in your ears.
On a side note, I got an estimate for DGD for a new opener and it was in the 400 dollars range for just a regular opener, I passed and just installed it myself.