INDEPENDENCE, Mo. – Ralph Yarnell struggled as he tried to open one of the two garage doors at his home. Besides being heavy, the more than 30-year-old doors had seen better days.
“It was time to replace them with good doors,” the 76-year-old said.
He ordered two new doors and an automatic opener from Prolift Garage Doors in Blue Springs.
Yarnell wrote Prolift a $4,000 check as his deposit, just over half of the $7,500 price tag. Yarnell said he was told the new doors would arrive in about a month.
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That was March 2023 — and Yarnell is still waiting.
He told FOX4 Problem Solvers that for the first few months he wasn’t too concerned.
“I waited and waited and waited,” he said. “I finally called about the order. They had lost it.”
Yarnell said they told him they placed a new order, and after another two months of waiting, the doors arrived.
Except there was a problem.
The top panel of each door was missing. Prolift, which promised Yarnell the missing panels would arrive within weeks, put cardboard in as a temporary fix.
Again, Yarnell said he was patient.
“Waited and waited and waited,” he said.
After two months had gone by and the missing parts had still not shown up, Yarnell demanded his old doors be reinstalled. He didn’t feel safe with garage doors that provided no real security.
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Then in mid-October, seven months after he first placed his order, a Prolift representative messaged him saying they now had his complete doors. But Yarnell said when he called back to set up an installation date, he never got a return call.
“I never heard anything,” Yarnell said. “And I haven’t heard anything since.”
This was FOX4 Problem Solvers’ first complaint about Prolift Garage Doors, which opened in Blue Springs two years ago, according to the Missouri Secretary of State’s office.
Our team paid an impromptu visit to Prolift’s office, but no one was there. However, we quickly reached the owner by phone.
He acknowledged there had been multiple problems trying to get Yarnell’s doors. But once the doors arrived, Prolift said it had tried repeatedly to contact Yarnell about an installation date and could never reach him.
Yarnell acknowledged that he has a flip phone that doesn’t work that well. In fact, a few times when Problem Solvers called him, we weren’t able to even leave a message.
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That’s the same problem Prolift said it experienced. Yarnell also doesn’t have an email.
Of course, Prolift could have written Yarnell a letter since the company was unable to reach him by email or phone.
After talking to FOX4 Problem Solvers, Prolift called Yarnell again. This time, he picked up the phone and they scheduled a new installation date.
The next time we paid a visit to Yarnell’s home, his new doors were installed and working well.
“I’m very happy,” he said. “This is a problem solved.”
Yarnell told FOX4 that next on his agenda was to get a better cell phone, one that will allow callers to leave messages.
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