Garage door work in Arizona is licensed trade work. A job of $1,000 or more in labor and materials, or any job that needs a local building permit, needs a license from the Arizona Registrar of Contractors (A.R.S. 32-1121 (opens in a new tab)). The record is public, it costs nothing to read, and it answers most of the questions worth asking about the company in front of you.
It takes 3 steps.
Step 1: get the number in writing
Ask for the license number before you ask for a price. A company name is not a number, and 2 companies can carry names that differ by a word. The number belongs on the bid, on the contract, and on the permit paperwork if a permit is part of the job.
Write down the legal name exactly as it appears, the number beside it, and the address the company gives. If someone will not put the number on paper, that is the whole answer, and you can stop there.
Step 2: check the status and the class
The record is at https://roc.az.gov/ (opens in a new tab). Search the number and read 3 things: the status, the class, and the name the license is held under.
Status tells you whether the license is active today. A license can be suspended or revoked, and a number that was good 2 years ago proves nothing about this week.
Class tells you what the holder may work on. The state rules have no class named for garage doors. Door work appears in the carpentry classes: metal doors or door frames under Carpentry (CR-7), metal doors and automatic door closers under Finish Carpentry (CR-60), and remodeling and repairs to existing structures under CR-61, while CR-5 is listed only as 'As restricted by Registrar' (Arizona Administrative Code, Title 4, Chapter 9 (opens in a new tab)). Read the class against the job you are asking for, not against the size of the ad.
Step 3: call the number on the record
The record lists a phone number for the license holder. Call that one. Not the number on the flyer, not the number in the text that arrived on a Saturday.
Ask 2 questions. Is this the company that quoted the work at my address? Is the license active for garage door work? If the person who answers cannot place the address, you have learned something worth knowing before anyone touches the door.
What the record does not tell you
It does not tell you whether the work will be good, whether the price is fair, or how soon someone can come out. Those are judgment calls and scheduling calls.
What it does tell you is that a named company is on the record for a named class of work, and that the name and the number belong to the state record rather than to a flyer. That is a floor, not a ceiling. It is also the cheapest check you can run on a company before money changes hands.
Before the work starts
Put the number, the class and the legal name on the same page as the price. Read the price against the published ranges on the cost page, and read how a request is handled on the terms page. If the number on the paperwork and the number on the record differ by a digit, ask why before anything gets ordered.
More: about us, contact, and the home page.
If you would rather not do that, tell us the job and we check the license before a contractor joins the network.
