Saw a garage door ad in Las Vegas? Compare before you call.

What to check before you call the company from the ad

An ad is a purchase, not a credential. It tells you a company had the money for a freeway sign on the I-15 or a slot in the morning drive, which is worth knowing and is not the same as knowing how they price a broken spring. Five things are worth checking, and all five take less time than the call itself.

None of them are trick questions. Any company doing this work properly answers all five without pausing, and the answers are the comparison. Ask us the same five.

The five things worth checking, on us and on anybody else:

• The licence number, and whether it is active. Garage door work in Nevada falls under a contractor classification, and the Nevada State Contractors Board keeps a public register you can search by number or by company name. Ours is 0091256, class C-3D Overhead Doors, bonded and insured. A number that cannot be produced on the phone has told you something.
• Whether the price is confirmed before work starts. Ask whether you get a written, itemised number before anything is touched, and what happens if more is found once the door is open. Ours is confirmed after a free inspection and before any work begins, and anything new is quoted separately with the old part in hand.
• Whether there is a trip fee, and what it costs you to say no. Ours is $0, and an inspection that ends with you declining the work costs you nothing at all.
• Who actually answers the phone. Some advertised numbers route to a dispatch service or a lead broker rather than to the company itself. That is not automatically bad, and it does change who is accountable, so it is worth asking who you are speaking to and who will be standing in your driveway.
• Whether the technician is local, and whether the company has worked on doors like yours. A Las Vegas door that has taken fifteen summers of heat and grit behaves differently from the same model anywhere else, and somebody who works this valley every day already knows that.

Why the biggest advertiser is not automatically the best choice

This is not an argument against advertising. Prestige advertises too, and every company you can find has paid to be findable in some form. It is an argument about what an ad proves, which is narrower than it looks.

A billboard on the 215 proves a company could afford a billboard on the 215. It proves a budget existed and a marketing decision was made. It does not tell you who will be on your driveway, how long they have done this, what your door will cost, or what happens if the spring they fit fails in eight months. Those are all different facts, and all of them are askable.

There is a second thing worth knowing, said plainly and without pointing at anybody: advertising is a cost, and costs are recovered in prices. That does not mean a heavily advertised company is expensive, and plenty are not. It means the size of the campaign tells you nothing about the size of the invoice in either direction, so it is not a signal you can lean on.

Large companies can be excellent. Small ones can be careless. The reason this page asks you to compare rather than to switch is that the comparison is the only part of any of this that is actually evidence.

If you cannot remember which company the ad was for

People search for what garage door company is on the billboard, for the garage door company they saw on TV, or for the number from a garage door radio commercial they only half heard, because the ad worked on the memory and not on the name. We cannot tell you whose sign you passed on the I-15 or whose spot ran during the game, and we are not going to guess, because guessing at a name in order to catch your search would be the same trick the ad played on you.

Here is the more useful answer. The name you are trying to remember matters less than the five questions above, because those questions sort companies faster than a name does. Find the number and call it, then call one more, and ask both the same things. If we are the second call, that is what this page is for. A second phone call costs you a few minutes and can save you a repair you did not need.

If you are trying to trace the ad itself, searching the phone number from it tends to work better than searching the slogan, and the state contractors register will list the companies actually licensed for overhead door work in this valley, which is a shorter list than the advertising suggests.

What a garage door ad can tell you, and what it cannot

What a fair garage door price looks like in Las Vegas

Fair is not the same as lowest. A fair price is one you were told before the work, that itemises what you are buying, and that does not move once the truck is in your driveway.

Two jobs can be priced honestly before anybody has seen your door, so we publish them. A qualifying same-day spring replacement is $499. A new garage door starts at $1,400 installed, on qualifying standard sizes and configurations. Both are confirmed with you at your own door after a free inspection and before any work begins, and if your door does not qualify you are told that at the inspection and you owe nothing.

Everything else is quoted after a technician has looked at it, because an opener, a bent panel and a set of cables on a twenty year old door are not one price. What should be constant is the sequence: look first, write the number down, then work.

What an itemised garage door price should show:

• Which parts are being replaced, how many of each, and whether you get to see the old ones.
• One spring or two. On a two spring door, replacing one and leaving a spring of the same age is a second visit waiting to happen, and you should be told that either way.
• The cycle rating of the springs being fitted. A lower rated spring is a lower price and a shorter life, and that is a decision you should get to make rather than one made quietly for you.
• Labour, stated separately from parts.
• The warranty that applies to that job, in writing, with its terms.
• What happens if something else is found once the door is open, and whether it starts before you have agreed to it.

What Prestige can prove, and where the list stops

This is the part of a comparison page where a company usually reaches for its best adjectives. Instead, here is what is checkable, and the list stops where the checkable things stop.

Confirmed, and worth verifying rather than believing:

• Nevada contractor licence 0091256, class C-3D Overhead Doors, bonded and insured. Search the number on the Nevada State Contractors Board register instead of taking our word for it.
• 35 years in the trade, family owned and still family run.
• $0 trip fee. The truck arriving costs nothing, at any hour.
• A free inspection of the whole door, not only the part that failed.
• A written price confirmed with you before any work begins, and the freedom to say no after hearing it.
• 24/7 emergency service, all makes and models, on residential, commercial and RV doors across the Las Vegas Valley.
• Financing available, applied for at the time of the quote, with approval coming from the finance provider rather than from us.
• Warranties on the work, with terms confirmed in writing for the job you are having done.

Already have a quote from the company in the ad?

If they have already been out and left you a number, the comparison stops being theoretical. Show us the quote.

The visit costs nothing and the inspection costs nothing, because the trip fee is $0 and the inspection is free whether you go ahead or not. A technician looks at the same door, and you get our written price before anything is touched. If the first quote was fair, you will hear that from us, and that is a useful result too: you go back to the first company knowing the number was real.

What we will not do is promise to come in under somebody else's number before seeing your door. A company that promises that is bidding rather than pricing, and the usual way that promise gets kept is with a cheaper part. Our number is our number, in writing, before you decide.

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