My Story:
About 10 years ago, my Wife and I decided to do some major upgrades on our house in Anchorage Alaska. This included the addition of high-density foam insulation under new fiber cement siding, All new energy efficient windows, a new Lochinvar high efficiency boiler system, and last but not least, a new garage door and door operator.
In our research to find the best product for the application that fit our budget, we selected a Thermacore garage door manufactured by the Overhead Door company. These doors are well engineered, and well-reviewed. Our local Overhead Door vendor "Pioneer Door" was contacted for a quote for the door and new operator and installation came and went without an issue.
Over the next few years, we started to have issues with the Marantec Door Operator that was installed by Pioneer Door at the same time the garage door was replaced, until the Marantec Operator died for good. I out of Alaska in the spring of 2019 on business when the Garage Door operator failed, and I promptly called Pioneer Door to schedule a service call to troubleshoot. Seems that the garage door springs were not properly sized for the weight of the new garage door that was installed by Pioneer Door, which led the Marantec operator to prematurely fail. After voicing my dismay to the Manager, a new operator, and springs were installed within days of the failure and everything seemed fine until just the other day. Upon returning home from shopping, we attempted to open the garage door from the car remote and it would not open. Upon inspection, I found that 1 of the springs that was installed the year before was broken and therefore we couldn't even open the door manually.
I contacted Pioneer Door and explained the issue, and was advised by one of the Salesmen that "these springs have a maximum cycle life" as in they can only be used to open / close your door so many times before failure. Really??
A couple days later a Service Tech arrived to inspect and repair. He was a nice enough Guy and seemed to know his craft. He weighed the door, and discussed required spring size with the Home Office, and 2 new springs were cut and brought out to the house for install which again, went without issue.
Pioneer Door was nice enough to waive the Technician's Service charge, however they felt compelled to charge me $ 136.00 for the 2 new springs. I would have thought that they would want to warranty the full service and parts on this as it was actually their over site for not installing the correct springs the year prior.
To make matters worse, I had just painted the ceiling in the garage, and now I have to repaint again due to the marks left by the Technician. read more