Complaints

• Initial Complaint

  05/10/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Resolved

  More info

  I called Carl's because a roller had come off the track on my garage door. I agreed to the charge of $125 for a 30-minute service call. The technician showed up on time on 5/3. He was very nice and polite (as was the office staff when I made the appointment). The technician popped the roller back in the track and then said he needed to figure out why it was happening. He was cranking on a gear to get more tension on the cable. Suddenly there was a loud popping noise. He said that he'd gotten the tension up to 14 (or so -don't recall the exact #) and was trying to get it up to 16 (ish). That was when the part broke. Then, he suspected that the torsion spring might be broken, so he took it off to examine it and it was fine. He made a call to someone and came back to tell me that the part that broke is no longer made. He suggested that I call another company that might have an old one in stock. He said I'd get a call later that day with a quote to replace the torsion assembly. That never happened. He did not charge me for the service call. I was not convinced at this point that he'd broken the part. It's an old door. I called the company he recommended. That guy told me that the broken part had odd tool marks on it and he suspected that the technician from Carl's broke it. He didn't have the part. I called a 3rd company and they came out for an estimate. Both the estimator and the technician said the part was manually broken. If there had been wear and tear on the torsion assembly, the spring would have broken not the part that did break. I paid the 3rd company $550 to replace the entire torsion assembly because 1 part wasn't available. The tech said the problem with the rollers was because of a separation in the track where the rollers rubbed and eventually got caught. The only thing he found wrong with the torsion assembly was the broken part. I wrote to Carl's telling them what had been discovered. They denied any liability.

  Business response

  05/17/2023

  On May 3rd, 2023, we were scheduled to complete a service call at Mrs. *******’s home. The problem was explained to our office was that the bottom roller had fell off, it was reinstalled, and then top roller fell off.  When our technician arrived to site, he tried the door by hand and the cables were slack when the door was half up. Cables being slack can cause the door to be “racked” (tilted) which can cause the rollers to pop out as was the purpose of the call. The spring system the customer had was called a torquemaster which is a proprietary product from Wayne-Dalton which is primarily plastic parts outside of the drums and interior spring. Due to the slack in the cable there was already issues within the system, and if the homeowner didn’t work the door by hand, they would have never known. Our technician tried to add tension to the spring system to get the door to balance and the system broke apart. Due to this issue and us having to put together a plan to fix the problem we did not charge our service call fee of $125.00 to the customer. While the customer says it was our fault, this was our first time at this location. We have no knowledge of who installed the door, or who serviced the product before us, we were just trying to solve the customers problem. Due to headroom and side clearance issues, our technician wanted to touch base with the service manager and owner to come to a conclusion on how to best move forward in this situation as we do not carry torquemaster. This discussion took longer than anticipated as we needed to find a way to fix this problem due to very tight headroom and searching for a replacement torquemaster we were not able to find.  When we called The homeowner back on Monday to give her the options we had, she had already called another company to come out and fix her door the next day. Had we charged the customer the cost of the initial service call we would have immediately refunded the cost of the service as she went to another company. If we have done the work needed, the total cost would have been $425.00 for the torsion conversion, which can be found on our website. When the homeowner contacted us after the other company did service, she claimed the original call was for rollers “catching” in the track and that nothing was wrong with the door otherwise. She also claimed that the company that came in and completed the work left the damaged parts which showed proof of tool marks on the plastic, which is the only way to add tension to that type of system and could have been put there by any person that has worked on that system.
  
  While we do not take responsibility for this issue as we were trying to fix the original problem the homeowner called in for. However, in the name of customer service, we would be willing to reimburse the homeowner the difference between the cost she paid and what she would have charged to fixed the issue totaling $125.00.

  Customer response

  05/17/2023

  
  Better Business Bureau:
  
  I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ********, and find that this resolution is acceptable to me. I do not agree with the details of the business' response but I don't want to waste any more time on this issue.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  ****** *******

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