Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Of Garage Door And Banal Suburban Life

My garage door broke a few months ago and I always thought I will be able to fix it.  Only the lowest panel was broken and it seems easy enough ....  When the weather gets warmer I will get to it.  I know I was not the handy man type so I was in denial, I was just delaying the inevitable:  to hire someone to fix it, or better yet, not to fix it at all.  Jin and I had gone to Home Depot to check out the doors and the experience wasn't entirely positive, I noticed they use the same HP monitor I do, so we had something in common.  But that was the only connection we had.  And it just reinforced my denial that I was going to fix it myself.  Some day.

Anyway, one day I got myself into the garage and the door just dropped.  And it stuck and I couldn't pull it up so I was locked inside.  In the end I was able to climb out from the broken panel.  So Jin and I headed to Sears the following weekend.  Except the fact that they didn't carry the actual door in store, surprisingly the Sears experience was pretty positive.  I got the ball rolling by requesting call back online and I got a call back and was given a quote right away.  Then a Sears contractor came to take the actual measurement and reconfirm the quote.  It went like $60 higher as the door needs to cut down from the standard 8 x 7 and blah blah blah.   Through out the transaction I got emails confirmation of the quote so I felt comfortable.  The door came much faster than promised, and two guys came to install it in the morning, arrived even earlier than promised, and got the door installed in about an hour.  Was it an absolutely perfect installation?  Not quite, but given the experience I had with prior contractors, I was quite happy with this rather painless experience and was pleasantly surprised by how quick the whole thing was done from beginning to end.

I paid about $750, about half goes to labor and the door is just the very basic model, no insulation no nothing.  I am glad it's over.

2 comments:

  1. It's well worth it man. Just for the time you saved. It is a pitty for me in HK know that service level in US is so good. For us, appoint to fix something only comes in morning or afternoon. You have no idea exactly when the guys will appear.

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  2. Services really vary. If your cable reception got problem, you call and they will try to trouble shoot over the phone if still no good, then they will send in the technician. And they can't give you a specific time, usually a window of maybe 2-3 hours, I don't remember. That's why I am surprised by the overall positive experience. Often time, service or lack of service is really the norm.

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