I apologize for I know that this review is very long and if you don't want to read the whole context of this experience, then you may start reading my review below the dotted line. Thank you.
I live in Elkridge and the neighborhood I'm in, it's a very nice area. When you drive through, all you see is green, blue and white. Green, blue and white as in, green grass and trees, clear blue sky and white houses. Everything seems like the movie "Pleasantville", until you drive by and see what's in my garage, then you'd think you stepped in a nightmare. Yeah, you might ask me why I haven't cleaned out my garage, especially since I've been living there for a decade now. Personally, I didn't care about what was inside the garage and I know I'm not the only one with this "habit". Or at least, I thought I didn't care...
Until my garage door broke.
When my garage door broke, everything changed. Every weekday afternoon, traffic through my neighborhood would be nuts; 10-20 cars driving through every minute. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but still there were a lot of cars passing by! And I'm sure to some of them (at least), my garage was an eye sore. So, trying to be considerate, I decided to clean up the garage, at least until we try and get this garage door fixed. I've spent days cleaning out the garage and must have lost almost 5 pounds doing so. It seemed like no matter what I ate, I still lost weight because I did so much cleaning (that's how unorganized my garage was).
I work at an auto body shop and thought maybe the mechanics and system is similar to that of cars... Dead wrong. In fact, I believe I made the damage worse. This is what I've noticed about the garage door being broken: The steel wire that allows the door to go down was unwound, the "panel box" was crooked due to one of the pillars being broken so that made the garage door itself crooked, and one of the sensors weren't on. The sensor wasn't a big deal because it wasn't on for years and the door still worked. I gave up and decided to do some researching on finding a garage door repair company to do the work for me.
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I went on Yelp and found about 20-30 garage door repair companies throughout the state of Maryland. I checked the top 10 companies listed then another 5 scattered throughout the pages and here is my conclusion: I'm not going to badmouth any company, but I did find 1 that seemed legit and with no negative reviews, "Door Tech Garage Door Service". Why did I believe this company was the right one for me? Because of numerous reasons. This place may only have 4 reviews, but when I checked each reviewer and their patterns (when they reviewed other places and how they wrote each review) in reviewing other places, I believe them to be real people, real reviewers. Their reviews may seem short, but not everybody will write essays like me. :)
I checked their website and saw they give out free estimates. I called the company and Jim Whitehead picked up the phone. He was very accommodating and understood my situation very clearly. It was pretty much an emergency. It's getting freakishly cold and even though I cleaned most of the garage, it still looked like an eye sore. We both agreed the next day, between 3 and 5pm would be great and that he would give me a call before he came. He came the next day at around 3:40pm without calling me LOL. My brother texted me saying he was there while I was at the gym. Luckily, the gym is literally a couple minutes from where I live. So I came and he diagnosed the problem: The steel wires were unwound and tangled, the garage door was bent and crooked, the steel beams that allowed the wheels to go through were bent, the panel box was crooked due to the pillar being broken and the smaller panel and sensor wasn't working properly. It was pretty much what I've noticed but with a few more problems that I didn't see.
He informed me the price which was surprisingly cheap. Just FYI, I did a lot of research beforehand and I was expecting to pay $500+ but his price was nowhere near it. I happily agreed and he started to do what he was hired to do while I mowed the lawn. When I was halfway done, he informed me of 2 more problems (one of the hinges on the door were missing and another steel beam was out of place) but that his price won't change. It took me about 50 minutes to mow the whole lawn and that pretty much gave him enough time to fix everything except replacing the sensors. He informed me that they weren't a current priority, but that they should be replaced soon.
He came around 3:30pm and left around 4:50pm. It took him just under an hour to do everything. He was honest and stuck with his original estimate. He was also very down to earth and quite humorous where we conversed for almost 20 minutes after the job was done.
I'm so glad that my instincts and research led me to this company. Jim is an honorable man who has integrity and is the backbone to the company. Thank you Jim. read more