ORLANDO, Fla — “I’m shaking my head, I’m going, this doesn’t sound right, but I gotta have this fixed,” said Orlando homeowner Scott Berry.
A broken garage door spring at his home led to a charge of more than $12,000 by the repair company. Berry needed to get his car out of the garage the next morning, so he paid what other experts consider an outrageous price for the garage door repairs that were made.
Action 9 started looking into questionable garage door repair costs three years ago after hearing about a case where a woman who had her car stuck in her garage was taken advantage of by the repairman.
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In 2023, Peggy Brigham of Malabar told Action 9 Consumer Investigator Jeff Deal, “Wanted to get it done, yeah, couldn’t get the car in and out.”
Brigham paid more than $2,000 for what the repairman claimed were “hurricane proof” garage door springs.
“And I thought, ‘Well, I live in hurricane country, I guess I’d probably better go the big route,’” she said.
The problem is there are no such things as hurricane proof springs.
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“Those are pretty standard springs,” said Doug Berlin with Above the Rest Garage Doors after he looked at Brigham’s new springs back then. He said while work was done, he believed the price was out of line.
Berlin said, “Repair on this garage door for me, the two springs would have been $309. That’s labor and parts.”
But the $2,000 price tag is a fraction of what Scott Berry was charged last month.
“I’m embarrassed to say it, but I am wiser. I was paying over $12,000 for a garage door repair,” Berry said.
A Google search connected him with a company called Garage Door & Gates. His invoice shows he was charged $1875 for each spring, totaling $3,750 just for those parts. Other companies charge around $265 a pair.
Nylon roller wheels were listed as $95 each on his invoice. Action 9 has seen them for as little as few dollars each.
Another local company, told Action 9 the work he had done, would have been around $1,500 with a higher quality opener, nothing close to $12,000.
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According to Berry, the repairman had this explanation, “He said, ‘We’re not criminals. We do the job. We fixed your door.’”
Action 9 couldn’t find a company listed in state records with the exact name Garage Door & Gates. Consumer Investigator Jeff Deal called the phone number on the invoice and asked if $3,750 is the normal price for two springs.
The man on the phone answered, “It really depends on what type of springs he got and what type of warranty he got as well.”
But he didn’t say what type of springs cost that much and couldn’t even tell Jeff Deal where the company is located.
The customer service representative said, “So, we’re a mobile service, no physical location of the office for customers to stop by.”
Jeff Deal asked, “What’s your registered address with the state, though?”
The customer service rep replied, “May I ask why you need all this information?”
Deal said, “That’s a pretty straightforward and simple question…what your address is for your business, and where you’re registered.”
Jeff Deal was placed on hold for about 8 minutes, then the phone disconnected.
The 888-phone number listed on Scott Berry’s credit card statement was the same number listed on Peggy Brigham’s statement from three years ago. The business name was similar. Berry’s charge was listed as GARAGE AND GATE. Brigham’s was listed as GARAGE AND GATES.
When Jeff Deal called that phone number, the woman who answered claimed she didn’t know where the company is located.
She said, “I just work remotely, sir.”
Deal questioned, “They didn’t tell you if they’re based somewhere in Florida or somewhere?”
She replied, “I didn’t even ask those questions, sir.”
The Better Business Bureau has received complaints about garage door repairs connected to those two phone numbers and hasn’t been able to determine if they connect to a legitimate company either.
Director of Investigations for the BBB in central Florida, Gerry Mendiburt said, “Many times consumers will call these numbers they find online and it turns out it’s a referral service. So, you don’t really know who will be knocking on your door.”
Scott Berry wants others to be aware of what happened to him.
“Make sure they have a street address, a website, read reviews,” Berry said.
The four different people Action 9 spoke with for the company, gave a different company name. When Action 9 called the phone number for the repairman Berry spoke with, the man who answered confirmed his name, but denied working for Garage Door & Gates, then hung up.
Days later after the repairs, Berry did eventually convince the company to lower the amount it charged to $3,000 instead of $12,000. That’s still twice the amount another company told us it would have charged.
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