Neighbor Won't Cooperate With Garage Door Repairs

[Ploomf]

My question involves a condominium located in the State of: Minnesota

My bf and I live in a condo, which I own. The garages are all in a row, and our stall is next to one of our neighbor’s who I will call “Bill.” Bill also owns his condo. I will mention that all garage door openers are paid for by the owners.

Lately, we noticed that our garage remote was no longer opening our garage any more, but it would instead open Bill’s. We spoke to him about it, and he said he’s aware that his opener (the actual machine, not the remote) is very old and is not working well. He had the maintenance guys reset the codes several times, to no avail. I called the manufacturer of my opener, and they said when openers go bad, the transmitter can go out and it will search for any code it can find, which explains why my remote was opening Bill’s. (My opener is fairly new and worked fine up until lately.)

But this problem is happening to 3 others people’s garage doors in that row, not just ours. We all either have to get out of our cars and use our keys or manually lift the doors. This is not only inconvenient, but a problem since many people are elderly and/or disabled or with health problems. The office workers claim we need to work this out ourselves. We have tried talking to Bill, but he has made no effort to fix/replace his opener. So what do we do?

My idea is to first verbally complain and give them a deadline. If no results, then send a written complaint to the higher-ups at the association. If that doesn’t work, then I guess I will have to sue him and/or association. I’m hoping they can replace Bill’s opener, and then charge him for it.

Can we sue the assoc and/or Bill for loss of quiet enjoyment if this is not resolved? Even if I were to win such a case, what can a judge do in order to force him to fix the problem? Does it have any bearing if any of us is legally disabled? Sorry so many questions, it’s hard to know which path to take here.

[jk]

before you do anything, you will have to be able to prove what you suspect is happening is what is actually happening. I don't see that so far.

I called the manufacturer of my opener, and they said when openers go bad, the transmitter can go out and it will search for any code it can find, which explains why my remote was opening Bill’s. (My opener is fairly new and worked fine up until lately.)

that makes no sense to me as to why your remote would not open your door. It might open Bill's too but why would it not open yours too?

[Mr. Knowitall]

That's correct. If the code is correctly set the garage door opener may open more than one door - Bill's and your own - but it should still work on your own. There's no callback from the unit inside the garage that would tell the remote to stop signalling.

[Ploomf]

Well, I called the manufacturer again to ask why my remote will open his and not mine, and they said that there is probably interference sent out from his opener. I'm not an electrician, I can only take their word for it. It not happening to just me, it is happening to all of us. But it doesn't matter any more because...

...it's been resolved. We complained to the office again, and there is a new manager that we didn't know, and she is going to send a repairman out to look at Bill's opener and repair/replace it if necessary, and then he will be charged for it. The logic is that even though we do not own the garage spaces, we are responsible for maintaining them, which includes keeping the openers in proper working order. So we are finally going to get somewhere with this issue. Thank you for reading.

[Mr. Knowitall]

Well, I called the manufacturer again to ask why my remote will open his and not mine, and they said that there is probably interference sent out from his opener.

Did they outsource product support to Bangalore?

[Lehk]

Is your opener still under warrantee? It is yours that has failed. The opener unit is a receiver not a transmitter it should not be able to interfere, if it were in such bad shape electrically that it were blanketing the local EM spectrum with interferance that is something the FCC can and will enforce against bill

However that is very unlikely for three reasons:

first as stated it is a receiver and so a simple incorrect behavior would not make it start transmitting

Second if it had a major electrical fault causing interferance it would usually be a broad spectrum interferance also effecting AM radio nearby, TV FM radio, cell phones, wifi networks, portable phones etc

Third, EM radiation intensity falls off at a rate of distance cubed because it is radiating out filling a three dimensional space, and so if it were radiating and stopping your opener from working it would be totaly blinding itself. If I assume 12 foot wide garage center to center and if said fault were a full foot away from bills antenna you are still 12 times farther away 12*12*12 = 1720 times more interference for his antenna than yours, even if it were somehow 2 feet away from his antenna that is still 216 times more to itself than to yours.




TL;DR version: you need to get your unit fixed