Thomas C.

The good: Dealing with Ameri-glide to pick out and configure what I wanted was efficient and easy. The salesman was very helpful. The product was delivered on time. The assembly was generally obvious with a little trial and error. In a day, was working as advertised. The unit (roughly a 3' by 4' platform with max heigth of 7' and two call stations) is sturdy, simple, of reliable low tech basic construction, well made, and completely adequate to the task it was designed for. It was installed the next day after delivery and has been performing as expected since then (about 2 weeks). From seeing how it is built and understanding how it works, I expect a long service life with little trouble or maintenance required, (It is installed in my garage, thus protected from the weather.)

The bad: It came with several parts bent and dented. Fortunately the metal bends easily and it was not hard to re-bend into the proper shape with a hammer and some blocks of wood such that the damage is entirely fixed to the condition of "like new". The instructions are obviously written for the staff at Ameri-glide who do the pre-shipping assembly, or for those already familiar with the part names, locations, and assembly process. However, it wasn't that hard to figure it out and a few of the pictures were useful. The assembly, anchoring and configuring the limit switches process took two of us the best part of a day.

The thing arrived on a pallet and had a shipping weight of almost 922 pounds. It had been inserted into the truck (18 wheeler with lift-gate) by a fork lift (lifting the pallet by the heavy end as was required) working from a loading dock. The truck stops in the street (curbside delivery) at my home where of course there is no loading doc. The pallet could only be lifted by the end at the tailgate and the driver could only use his pallet jack at the end that was not supposed to be lifted. However, that was moot since the pallet was much longer than either the width or depth of the lift-gate and since the pallet was too long to turn around in the truck, the lift gate could not be used. The only way the 922 lb pallet could come off the truck in one piece was if the truck backed up to a loading doc. Thus, having this delivered to your residence (unless you live in a warehouse) is problematic. Fortunately, knowing how much this product weighed, I had 3 guys there to help, otherwise the driver could not have delivered the lift to my residence -- period. We took the pallet apart and lifted the individual parts out of the truck. The heaviest part weighs about 500 pounds and is manageable with 4 men.

After the unit was assembled and anchored, the lift would only go in one direction (up) to about 4 feet high and then stop -- this was about 2 inches higher than the stairs landing. Quite by accident I realized that if the lift was taken above the stairs landing it would go down afterwards but only two inches. After setting the upper and lower limit switches (directions did not apply) it went up to the landing and stopped just like it was supposed to but would not go down. After a half hour of testing out what was going on by manually circumventing the limit switches at the solenoid power switch itself, it became obvious that the down limit was rigged with two switches on an "OR-gate" configuration while several other switches seemed to have no function. I shorted out the offending limit switch and the unit began to operate perfectly. My wife uses it every day.

The ugly: The paper work that you must sign before the sale can go through roughly states that if anything malfunctions or doesn't work or is mis-ordered or mis-shipped it is your problem to get it fixed. There is a NO RETURNS policy regardless of what happens or who is at fault. After they have your money they are done except they will send you free parts as required under the terms of the guarantee.

A big black blemish occurred in the area near where the sheet metal skirt was badly dented (probably during transit) but it cleaned up reasonably well after the dent was beaten out.

The sublime: I designed an automatic gate that was made of 2x4s, a few metal strips, three small hinges, two pulleys and a nylon rope. It works perfectly! As the platform ascends to the stair landing the gate automatically opens for the riders to get off (and remains open). As the platform descends to the garage floor the gate automatically closes and the stair railing appears to continue unbroken and sturdy across the lift access opening and into the wall on the other side of the opening. Total cost was about $25.00 and 3 hours of time. Sweet!

Overall: It is a good lift with a simple low-tech low-maintenance solid construction that should last a lifetime in a garage. There are few bells and whistles and high-tech frills to break or malfunction, but it does everything a lift needs to do and can be had at the best price in the industry. It is not a trivial installation and configuration, but if you have just a little electromechanical savvy or know someone who does – (like a handy man that does work around your house) – it is pretty easy to figure it out. I suspect Ameriglide would help you with the limit switches if you called them – it is easy to do once you see what is going on.