Northwest Door nwdusa.com Northwest Door manufactures poor quality garage doors, and LIES to avoid warranty Tacoma, Washington

I own a garage door company in Eastern Washington and use Northwest Door. We buy over a million

dollars a year of Northwest Doors. The door you have is on the lower end of quality. This should have

been handled by the builder. I am surprized that NWD did not help you out with your door problem

but usually the only thing that could damage a door that way is wind or something dented your door.

I try and not see the 500 series door unless my customers want a lower end door and I explain to them

that this door is not built to last.

We have had a few problems with doors that our damaged in production or that have failed in the field and 

NWD has stood behind their product in every instance. I like NWD and really like the fact that they are built right

here in the Northwest. I have sold other door brands Like Wayne Dalton and Clopay and have had the best luck with

Northwest Door.

i have a garage door company in Edmonds, Wa. and have done business with N.W. Doors for 19 years and testify that they are an EXCELLENT company.
However, the door in question is their "501 door. It's a 16x7 non-insulated steel door and is their bottom of the line door. i've always put in their ThermaTech line door, which is an 1 1/2" fully insulated steel door and a much better quality door. There are reasons that contribute to the cracking of the sections on the cheaper door:
1. If the opener is mounted too high off the door, it will push down on the door as it closes and can do damage.
2. The wrong torsion or extension springs on the door can cause problems.
The solution can be as easy as putting a 2nd strut on the middle of these double wide doors from side to side, which would give the door more strength. That would take care of the problem in most cases. Many of these doors will have the section edges crack over time and we ALWAYS  replace them with their  better quality door.
Like i said above, N.W. Door is a wonderful company, but many home builders opt for the lowest priced door, which is not a good idea.

Sincerely,
j.b.

First, let me start off by saying it is absolutely misleading for this company to say that the attorney general closed the case based on the contents of their response. This is not true and was closed for the simple fact that the company had responded, not because it was found to have any merit. 

This email was sent to the Attorney General of WA from the CEO of this company, that claims the installing dealer reported that there was no defect and that I caused the issue. I was actually sent a copy of his email by the Attorney General, and decided to bring up the true facts (as showcased below) to the CEO, of which he never responded.

I was actually CC'd on the email from the installing dealer to this company that stated "Upon inspection it is clear that the sections themselves have just split/cracked at 2 locations. Both areas that are splitting are at the center of the sections. The # 3 section is splitting at the top of the section and the # 4 section is splitting at the bottom of the section. I did inspect the entire door and at this time I could not see any other areas that have this issue. I also did inspect the door for install, and it looked clean. I also inspected the door for any type of misuse or damage by the homeowners and could not find any." So you can see from what the installing dealer wrote, it is obviously untrue how the CEO tried to portray that the installing dealer said I caused the problem. If we look at the facts, the installing dealer said it was clear the sections "split themselves."

And trust me, this company and their officers had all this information and still tried to misreport and mislead even the Attorney General with either outright lies or false facts.  

They did not even follow through with their "offer" of saying they would replace the garage door. I actually paid some true professionals to repair the garage door.

As a finale to all this, I will say that I would have been satisfied and left the issue alone if it was told to me that the warranty was expired and they weren't able to help because of this. The reason why I chose to go to all these lengths is because their sales director misrepresented and tried to lie about why they were denying the warranty in saying that I was the cause of the splitting, and their CEO also clearly misrepresented the facts in their rebuttal to the Attorney General.

Below is the response Northwest Door filed on July 27th 2011 to the Washington State Attorney Generals office. They closed the file after reviewing the report below.

I received your offices complaint from Mr. Song (below) and will respond with the facts and background as we know them.
Our National Sales Manager, Regional Sales Manager and the installing dealer (an independent company) have all been to the homeowners installation and came away with very different facts than that alleged by Mr. Song. The owners four and a half year old garage door was hit from the exterior and in an attempt to straighten it back out (self-repair), the homeowner admitted to both pounding it with a hammer and cutting the door in an attempt to get it to work (line up) again. These statements from the homeowner were made both to our employee and the installing dealer. This attempt at repairs only caused the door to then be completely inoperable. He claimed this as a manufacturers defect and wanted it covered under warranty. We rejected that claim and offered him replacement sections for purchase.
 
Northwest Door has been in business since 1946 and supplies many thousands of garage doors every year both in the US, Canada and Asia. We have clearly delineated warranties that provide for coverage against manufacturing defects. This was not a manufacturing defect.
 
This said, we will endeavor to replace these two damaged sections by working with the homeowner at no charge to him and will request that he retract this complaint. These types of complaints can be very damaging when and if the facts are not able to be borne out and clearly disseminated so as to clear our name.
 
Northwest Door, Inc. prides itself in an unblemished multi decade reputation of building the highest quality garage doors.
I will follow up to your offices with the background notes taken and conclusions reached from when this incident occurred.