Had an incident recently where I closed the garage door, walked in the house, and a moment later heard a crash (a small one, but nonetheless, a crash it was). I briefly debated ignoring what I imagined had to be bad news, but chose to be a responsible home-owner and go investigate it instead. There was no obvious reason for such a terrible sounding noise until I tried to open the garage door back up. It moved and inch and stopped.
Great.
I knew that Auburn Door had installed this currently uncooperative piece of modern technology (which I'm sure was fine for many years--at least the last 5 that we've lived there for), so I called them to see if they had any ideas as to what was going on.
A friendly voice answered (Julie) and gave me a preliminary diagnosis of a broken spring. She said that like car tires, it's usually best to replace both springs to provide equal tension and that it would be around $225-ish. Seemed logical so I trusted her on that. I learned later that these torsion springs often last for 7 years give or take or around 10,000 open/close cycles.
Given both my car and I needed to leave soon (and at that time I wasn't yet confident in my manual door opening skills, although I sure am now!), Julie said she'd call the guys and see how fast someone could make it out. She called me back a few minutes later and, as promised, someone was in my driveway ready to fix the broken spring 15 minutes later.
I also asked for and received a valuable lesson on how to switch the door from automatic to manual, so that the situation won't be as dire next time. He was a gracious and respectful teacher (especially given this wasn't exactly rocket science and a simple pull of the handle is basically the extent of the knowledge I was lacking.)
I think given the kindness of the employees I spoke with and the response to my urgent situation, I'm happy to give the Golden 5 Star rating to Auburn Door Inc. read more