TLDR; Don't waste your time with Best Garage Door Company. If they are still even around. Stephen…read morethe "owner" and his girlfriend who actually holds the license skipped town. For the longer story, read on.
Firstly, know that there are 5 pages of court cases against Stephen, mostly tax liens from the DOR and a few small claims for ripping people off on jobs. Dig around...he wasn't paying the guys working for him, burned pretty much all bridges in WA and fled to Arizona where his GF is from to start anew. He is still allegedly hiring contractors in the area to do jobs up here. I won't call out the felony charges too, but run a search and you'll see. Stay tf away.
BGDC seemed like a decent operation over a year ago. The owner was timely and came through when we needed a door fixed fast, which included installing a new set of springs and re-winding the cables.
Our most recent experience...not great. Stephen showed up 6 hours late to our appointment, only to say he had to reschedule because he didn't have what he needed to do an install. He knew what the job was (installing an opener, vinyl trim, a gasket, rollers). He promised to throw in a key pad too; cool. We rescheduled for 10a the next day.
So the next day I got a text from the business line (his girlfriend's phone) 2.5 hours after the arrival time saying that we had to again reschedule because the work van was impounded. FFS. We rescheduled for 10am the next day.
You'd never guess, but again Stephen didn't make it on time. I got a text from his girlfriend's phone that he was running behind. He did show up 5 hours late and started the install on an opener. His girlfriend hung out in the van the whole time. A little odd, but whatever. An hour or so later, he said he had to go to another job and would return in the morning to finish. 9am. After he left, I discovered that he broke one of my ladders.
The next day, I reached out just before 9am only to be met with confusion from dispatch (the girlfriend) saying that the appointment was between 4 and 6p. I said that would not work and to have Stephen call me. I got a text from GF again a couple hours later saying that Stephen was now out on a medical emergency.
I wanted to keep giving the benefit of the doubt here, but these are a lot of extreme, flakey excuses it seems. Anyway, she tried rescheduling for the next day again, 2-4p. That wasn't going to work here, so we pushed it another day.
Stephen did show up, albeit 3 hours late and finished installing the opener and wheels. He was confused about how much vinyl we were replacing, and the gasket he brought was like 4 feet too short. He assured me that he'd have another contracted tech come through a few days later to finish the vinyl and gasket installs, but oddly enough, not the price was going to be over $200 more than what we agreed, so he could pay this guy. I called him out on the ladder and he's like "oh yeah, I forgot to tell you" and we took $50 off the invoice.
I paid for the opener. The rest was to be paid after the job was done.
2 hours after a no show for the appointment time, I reached out for an ETA. No response. I reached out again twice during the next 4 hours. No response. They ghosted me. Didn't even open the messages and possibly blocked my number? Who knows. He has a new number now in AZ.
A couple of days later, the opener started acting up. I noticed the track flexing and the sensors were just all out of whack. I called up another company (Ed's Garage Doors Services) and they were out the same day, on time. Prices were negotiable and much better than BGDC.
The tech took a look at things and identified that the springs that Stephen installed a year prior were not even wound properly. That contributed to the track flexing on the opener, because tension was non-existent. He fixed the springs, completely moved the sensors and did the rubber seal on the door that Stephen didn't do. I did the vinyl myself for the $60 cost in supplies. No more issues and the garage is even warm now. Stay away.
