You can get vacation phone coverage without a temp agency — and for most garage door shops, the temp agency is the worst option on the list anyway. A temp costs more per hour than you'd guess, can't tell a broken spring from a bad remote, and leaves just as your office person comes back tanned and rested.
Here are the three options that actually work, what they cost, and how to pick one before the next vacation request lands on your desk.
Temp staffing was built for generic office work — filing, data entry, basic reception. Your phones aren't generic.
A caller says their spring snapped and the door won't move. Your office person knows what that means: don't touch the door, is the car trapped, a tech can be there this afternoon. A temp knows how to take a message.
The cost math is rough too. Agencies commonly mark up hourly wages 25–75% depending on the market and role — that's the industry-standard range, not a scare number. You're paying trained-receptionist money for someone who'll spend their first two days asking what a torsion spring is, and your customers can hear it.
Then there's the calendar problem. You need coverage for one or two weeks, a few times a year. That's the hardest possible engagement for a temp agency to fill well — and the easiest for the options below. The pillar on phone coverage for sick days and vacations maps every gap in the year, not just the planned ones; it's worth a read before summer PTO season.
Option 1: Cover it yourself. You or a lead tech grabs the office phone between calls. Cost: zero dollars, plenty of missed calls, and a crew that hates the week. It works for a two-day gap. It falls apart for a real vacation.
Option 2: A live answering service. Humans answer, take messages, and some will book into a schedule. Cost runs from a couple hundred dollars a month up, usually with per-call or per-minute pricing — and vacation weeks are exactly when call volume and overage charges spike. Quality varies by who's on shift.
Option 3: An AI receptionist. Ava answers every call 24/7, not just when your office person is away. She triages emergencies (car trapped in the garage, broken spring), captures name, number, address, and issue, books service windows into your schedule, and texts and emails you a summary after every call. Cost: $297/month flat, unlimited calls, whether the phone rings ten times or two hundred.
| Cover it yourself | Live answering service | Ava (AI receptionist) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost during vacation week | $0, plus lost jobs | $200–$600+, often per-call | $297 flat for the month |
| Knows garage door triage | Yes, if it's you | Rarely | Yes — built for it |
| Books service windows | Only when free | Sometimes | Every call |
| Covers nights and weekends too | No | Usually extra | Yes, 24/7 |
The honest tradeoff: a live service gives you a human voice, and some shops prefer that. Ava gives you consistency and a price that doesn't move when the phones get busy. For a one- or two-week gap that keeps coming back all year, flat and consistent usually wins.
Say your office manager takes a five-day vacation. Example numbers — swap in your own.
A temp at $20/hour plus agency markup runs $1,000+ for the week and still won't triage a broken spring correctly. Ava costs $297 for the month and was already answering your after-hours calls anyway — the vacation becomes a non-event.
Stop treating every vacation as a staffing emergency. When the phones run on something that doesn't take PTO, vacations stop being a coverage problem and become what they should be — your office person actually getting a break.
If you're reading this because coverage already broke, who answers when your receptionist quits is the emergency version of this plan. And backup phone coverage plans shows how to layer fallbacks so one absence never kills the phones again.
Set up vacation phone coverage without a temp before the request hits your desk. The week you don't have to think about it is worth more than the week you saved a few dollars.
Call the live demo and have Ava call you now — hear exactly what your customers will hear when they call your shop.