I'm closing out the year with the post I've been putting off writing all year, because it's the one that's hardest to keep professional.

My grandfather started installing garage doors in Richmond in 1972. He'd been a longshoreman before that. He saved up enough to buy a truck and a half-share of a shop on Moncton with a guy named Vic. Vic retired in 1988. My grandfather kept it. My dad joined in 1994 after he finished his apprenticeship. My grandfather died in 2009. My dad took it over fully. I joined officially in 2018 after BCIT.

I have my grandfather's old invoice books in a metal filing cabinet behind the front counter at the shop. The 1974 books list a new single-car door installed for $186. Adjusted for inflation, that's roughly $1,150 in 2026 dollars. I quote a new single steel raised-panel installed at $1,850 today. The job isn't cheaper. The doors are better — galvanized, insulated, longer warranties, safer openers. But the labour rate, in real terms, has held remarkably stable for 50 years.

The scams have stayed remarkably stable too.

I write these because nobody told me half of this stuff when I started, and a customer once paid $1,800 for a spring that costs us $48.

That's the line. I wrote it in post 3. I'm writing it again here because it's the reason this blog exists, and I want it to bookend the year.

What's changed since 1972

Doors got better. Foam-injected insulated sandwich construction (post-1995) is materially better than the single-skin steel of the 1970s. Warranties are longer. Galvanizing is standard. Paint chemistry holds up better.

Springs got slightly better. ASTM A229 oil-tempered carbon steel is still the standard, but corrosion coatings (IPPC-90, others) have given us 25K-cycle springs that survive Richmond's salt air for nearly double the life of the 1970s parts.

Openers got vastly better. The 1970s screw-drive operators were loud, slow, and prone to gear failure. Today's DC motors are quieter, faster, smoother, and more reliable. They also have built-in safety features that simply didn't exist 50 years ago — auto-reversal, force limit, photo eyes (mandatory since 1993). I have my grandfather's notes on operator service calls from the 1970s, and many of the failures he chased no longer happen on modern units.

Smart features arrived. MyQ, Aladdin Connect, HomeKit, Matter. Whether any of this matters is a separate question (see post 11). But the capability is new.

Codes tightened. UL 325 in 1993. CSA C22.2 No. 247 updates over time. Strata regulations expanded under the BC SPA. BC Building Code energy efficiency requirements have raised the bar on door insulation.

Customer expectations changed. In the 1970s, a customer waited 3 weeks for a service call and didn't complain. Today they expect same-day. The trade has adjusted, though not all of it well.

What hasn't changed

The basic mechanism. A torsion spring still counterbalances a sectional door's weight. The math, the physics, and the safety hazards are identical to what they were when CG Johnson invented the basic torsion-spring overhead door in 1921. The springs are bigger and better-coated, but a wound torsion spring stores deadly amounts of energy. Always has. Always will.

The skill required. A good garage-door technician learns the trade through hundreds of repetitions. There's no shortcut. The 25-year-old I trained last year is competent. He won't be expert until he's done another 600 to 800 service calls. This is true of every trade, and the trade publications keep saying it, and the public keeps not believing it.

The scams. And this is the hard part.

Why the scams keep working

I've thought about this a lot. The scam pattern in post 3 — the $1,800 spring, the fake "your opener is unsafe," the bait-and-switch ad — these are not new. My grandfather's notes from 1981 describe a "fellow charging $600 for a spring job that should be $90." Adjusted for inflation, his $600 then is roughly $1,950 now. The scam markup ratio hasn't moved in 45 years.

Why does it keep working? Five reasons:

1. Information asymmetry. Customers don't know what a spring should cost because they buy springs once every 10 years. The contractor knows. The contractor can quote any number with confidence.

2. Urgency. A broken garage door is a real inconvenience. Car stuck. Can't get to work. Can't get groceries home. The customer doesn't have time for three quotes. The first quote often wins.

3. Physical intimidation. Garage doors are heavy, loud, mechanical things. Springs make people nervous (correctly — see post 9). When the technician makes the door sound dangerous, customers want it handled today.

4. The Google-ad arms race. From 2020 onward, garage door service ads have become some of the most expensive Google PPC categories in the trades. Cost per click is between $35 and $85 in many markets. Companies that can't make the math work at honest prices either exit the ad space or run scam-pricing to cover the customer-acquisition cost. The honest local operators (us, others like us) often can't afford to outbid the scammers. We end up below them in search results.

5. The customer doesn't follow up. When the scam succeeds, the customer mostly doesn't realize. They paid $1,800, the door works, the technician's gone, life moves on. They might mention the price casually to a neighbour months later and learn it was high. By then the contractor is untraceable. Reporting to Consumer Protection BC is annoying. Most don't.

What I'm trying to leave behind

I started this blog because of the widow in Riverdale. The story from post 3. The $3,200 cash she paid for a spring and an opener she didn't need. I went out to her house. I refunded her out of pocket. I reported the operator. He resurfaced under a new name two months later.

I realized something during that drive home: I can refund one customer. I cannot stop the system that produced the scam in the first place.

What I can do is write things down. Build a public archive of what the work actually costs, how it actually goes, what good and bad look like. The next widow in Riverdale who Googles "garage door repair Richmond" before she pays the cash should — I hope — find one of my posts. The information asymmetry is the lever. Closing it is the project.

This blog is the project. Twenty posts now. More to come.

I don't know if it's working. I know that this year I've had at least 35 customers tell me, on the phone, that they "read your blog post on springs" before they called. That's more than zero. It's also more proof of what I already believed: customers who do five minutes of reading before they pay $1,800 don't pay $1,800.

What I tell new technicians

Sometimes the apprentice my dad hired asks me what I wish I'd known when I started.

I tell them three things:

1. The trade is honest work. Most of the people doing it are honest. The scammers get the headlines but they're a minority. Don't let the scam stories drown out the trade itself.

2. Your hands are your career. Spring work, especially. Wear PPE every single time. There is no service call that's worth your right hand. I know technicians who lost fingers because "it was a quick job." None of those quick jobs were quick enough.

3. The customer is paying for your judgement, not your time. Anyone with two functioning hands can replace a spring. What you're being paid for is to walk into a strange garage, look at a system you've never seen, identify what's wrong, identify what's about to be wrong, identify what's fine, and recommend the right scope. The technical work is the easy part. The judgement is the part that takes years.

What I want from customers

If you've read 20 of my posts, you owe me nothing. The blog is free. The information is yours. Take it.

But if you're calling me — or any other local Richmond operator — for an actual repair, here's what I want you to do:

  1. Get one or two quotes. Not five. Five is wasted time. Two competent local operators will give you quotes within 15% of each other. The third quote isn't telling you anything new.
  2. Ask the three questions from post 19: lifespan of the repair, what's left unaddressed, what's the 5-year forecast. Honest contractors answer all three.
  3. Pay fairly. Cheap is expensive in the long run. Premium-priced isn't always better. Match the spend to the actual use case.
  4. Tell a neighbour if the service was good. Most local operators run on word of mouth. We don't have the ad budgets. We do have the long-term Richmond presence.

A Steveston story (the one I wanted to tell for last)

My grandfather installed a garage door at a house on Garry Street in Steveston in 1979. Single-car detached. Wood-framed, single-skin steel door. He charged $245 installed.

In 2024 — 45 years later — my dad and I were called out to the same house. The current owner (the grandson of the original buyer, who'd inherited the house in 2019) wanted to replace the door. The original door, 45 years old, was still working. The current owner had been told it was "way past its time" by another contractor who'd quoted $4,800 to replace it.

We looked at the door. The springs had been replaced (probably in the late 1990s, based on the brand stamp). The bottom seal had been replaced twice. The opener was a 2003 LiftMaster that my dad recognized — he'd installed it. The door panels themselves were original. The hinges were original.

It was rusty. It was ugly. It was also structurally sound. We could have sold him a new door and a new opener that day. Combined quote: $4,485. We had it on the truck.

Instead my dad recommended a service call: weather seal replacement, hinge replacement, repaint, opener tune-up. Total: $785. The door would be good for another 8–12 years, easy.

The customer went with my dad's recommendation. He also told us he'd been planning to take the second contractor's $4,800 quote until we showed up.

What I noticed, driving away: my dad didn't lecture him about the other contractor. He didn't say "that guy was scamming you." He just quietly proposed the smaller job, did it well, and charged what it was worth.

That's the trade. That's what 30 years of doing the work the right way looks like. Not heroic. Not loud. Not interested in being praised. Just doing the work, telling the truth, and going home.

I'm trying to be that. Some days I get there. Some days I write angrier blog posts than I should. The work continues.

If you've read all the way through these 20 posts, thank you. Call me when you need me. Or call someone else like me. Just don't pay $1,800 for the $48 spring.

That's the post. That's the year.

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