Last Saturday one of my sitters was visiting a client who has us enter his home using a code box on the outside of his garage. We have regularly visited his home for about 3 years and never had a problem but on Saturday as my sitter closed the garage after entering, the door came off it’s tracks and got stuck about 1/3 of the way down.
All automatic garage doors have a manual over-ride to close but this doesn’t help very much if the wheels are off the tracks. My husband and I ran over to the clients house to help but there wasn’t anything we could do on a Saturday night to fix it. Luckily I also had a front door key for the home that I kept on file – so we were able to lock up the door from the garage to the house and secure the house. The key allowed us to enter for our next visit in the morning via the front door.
We did call the client to alert him that his garage would be open overnight – he understood and was not concerned.
Without a key this would have been a trickier situation. We could not have secured the house and still been able to get entry for the next visit.
My recommendation is that you never accept just a garage code or garage door opener from a client. Make sure that you always get a key to the home as a backup. You never know when the power may be out, or the door will malfunction. You don’t want these issues to interfere with your ability to care for the clients pets.
Thanks for sharing Danielle! A real-life example of what could happen. I hadn’t thought about this until a few months ago when another pet sitter mentioned a similar situation, except a storm had gone through and wiped out power to the block. With only a garage door opener and the power out you are stuck, and so is the pet.