I'm so angry

[Pburgh]

GRRRRRRRRRRRR
Last year I called a lawn company to do a Spring preemergent weed control treatment on my lawn. As I treat my lawn myself during the Summer and Fall, I told them I just wanted that one treatment. When I got home from work on Friday there was a note on my door that they had treated my lawn. I called them and asked who authorized the treatment. They stated that at the bottom of my statement last year there was a notice stating that "Your service will continue year after year until you notify us to discontinue". Sure enough, I looked at the statement and there in 1/32" print was the statement. I told the guy that last year I had never signed an agreement and had only called in for one treatment. His response was that I had to pay!!! I'm so PO'd that I could spit!!

TruGreen-Chemlawn BEWARE THIS COMPANY

[CajunMama]

Find his home lawn and over fertilize it!

[Pburgh]

ROTFLMBO - first laugh today!!!! Thanks Mama

[HURAKAN]

That wasn't nice. At the end they lost a potential future client in you.

[CajunMama]

We have a lawn guy that is supposed to take care of our weeds and such. The only problem is that he's killed all my gerber daisies and other flowering plants. I think he's clueless about bedding plants.

Another quick story (and where i got the idea to over fertilize the yard).... When we first moved into our neighborhood, my husband and 2 other men became very competitive about their yards. Each wanted to have the greenest, lushest and weedfree yard. One man even mowed with gloves on! He'd be pushing his self propelled lawnmower with one gloved hand and have the other gloved hand behind his back. He'd also complain about having to mow his yard (he didn't do much else around his house). My husband and the other man decided to give him have a reason to complain. They would fertilize his yard right before a rainstorm (of course he wasn't home). He was having to mow his yard at least twice a week! The last time they fertilized his yard, it didn't rain. The grass died in patches. He took some of the grass to a highly repubatable nursery. They told him he had a fungus . We never told him the truth!

[Pburgh]

OMG, that's hilarious. Shame on them.

[gtalum]

I can't say for sure in your state, of course, but often automatically renewing contracts are not enforceable. I wouldn't pay this if it were me. Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer and am not necessarily advising you to take the same course of action.

[CajunMama]

I can't say for sure in your state, of course, but often automatically renewing contracts are not enforceable. I wouldn't pay this if it were me. Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer and am not necessarily advising you to take the same course of action.

but did you sleep at a holiday inn last night?

[southerngale]

I'm with gtalum. I would tell them that you asked for ONE treatment and didn't sign anything agreeing to more.

Then tell them to dig up and find a copy of the check you paid them with last year. Tell them you wrote in the memo that you were going to clean their windows once a year for a fee of $1,000. Tell them you did it and they now must pay... after all, you wrote it on the memo.

LOL @ frick

[Pburgh]

gtalum, I have very good credit and want to keep it.

I have notified:
The Better Business Bureau
The Attorney General's Office (We have an elder abuse law here in Pennsylvania) Since I'm a 64 year old female and have never used the AGE or GENDER card - I'll play it)

and

Local Television news
Oh, I forgot The local Chamber of Commerce

I DON'T LIKE TO BE DUPED!!!!! Can you tell. LOL

[Stephanie]

gtalum, I have very good credit and want to keep it.

I have notified:
The Better Business Bureau
The Attorney General's Office (We have an elder abuse law here in Pennsylvania) Since I'm a 64 year old female and have never used the AGE or GENDER card - I'll play it)

and

Local Television news
Oh, I forgot The local Chamber of Commerce

I DON'T LIKE TO BE DUPED!!!!! Can you tell. LOL

OH CRAP! Don't mess with Pburgh!

Good for you!

LOL Cajun!!!

[gtalum]

gtalum, I have very good credit and want to keep it.

I have spotless credit, but I still refuse to pay what I don't owe.

[JQ Public]

Lol that's why I just do it myself. It is quite relaxing as well.

[mf_dolphin]

We had a bad experience with TruGreen a few years ago. Good luck and I hope you the best in making their life miserable

[Rainband]

Go Karen Don't ya just love the fine print. i say fight it's BS

[Miss Mary]

Hey Karan - I have some "fertilizer" you can borrow! I pick up 4 piles of this fertilizer, daily, you do the math - after a week, I have a lot of it! LOL

Personally, I absolutely despise lawn care companies!

First off, there are chemicals in their treatments b/c take a very good look at their employee - he's usually wearing rubber boots up to his knee, long pants, tucked inside the boots, long sleeved buttoned up shirt and a mask on.

Now, I have to ask - how safe is that stuff? My next door neighbor love to pay for services such as fertilizing, etc. Once their treatment was a yellow liquid, which got all over my daughter's shoes after she played in their yard. She came inside itching, welts on her back and arms. I had to give her Benadryl. I called the family to let them know, thinking they'd keep their kids off the grass for 24 hours (what is recommended I found out later) but they said, oh that's okay, we know about it, our kids don't have their scheduled bath until tomorrow night. I just stood there, holding the phone, shocked. My daughter was still itching after her shower and a dose of meds. I have thought later, I hope their kids can have kids someday!

When I see these guys come in the neighborhood, I keep my dog safe inside. I'm one of oh 2 or 3 out of 28 families that do not fertilize. They've given up given me flyers, hoping to get our business. I have said - what, allow you to poison my yard - no thanks!

LOL

I should add, we subscribe to the Jerry Baker gardening "method",, read: organic (as in beer/ammonia/dish soap on the lawn every July 4th!)....he he

Mary

[azskyman]

If there is any truth to the statement that misery loves company, I can attest to EXACTLY the same scenario before we moved from Illinois.

Fortunately for me, the company not only charged me for the service, but didn't do it!!

I say "fortunately" because the same company did several of my neighbor's yards on the same day and left "residue" that could prove that it was done. On my lawn, there was NO residue....just the bill on the door.

I had the supervisor come over to take a look, and once he saw that I had received the bill without the service, his option was to offer the first treatment free plus he would knock off a percentage of my fee for the rest of the year.

Based on the fact that the work was never done, but the bill was hanging on my door knob, I gave him the option of leaving politely now or leaving not-so-politely now.

And I told him if they ever applied any more chemical on my lawn that I would never pay for it because it was unauthorized.

They didn't come back. To this day, if they had (it was Tru-Green too), I wouldn't use that service.

Good luck in resolving the issue...and then seek out someone else the next time around.

Steve

[wx247]

We had bad luck with TruGreen as well. They come back and back and back unless you stop them. I had to call and let them know that my grandparents no longer wanted their sorry excuse for fertilizer and weed killer.

[Miss Mary]

TruGreen sounds very hard to discontinue service from. Reminds me of Readers Digest, of all things. When my daughter who's a senior in high school was selling magazine subscriptions in 6th Grade, we ordered the magazine for 2 years, so she would receive a calculator (which turned out to be a piece of you know what)....anyway, it's now 6 years later, the prescription expired, long, long ago but they keep calling. Referring to me as a loyal customer. I will never subscribe to that magazine again! If I knew they'd still be hounding me to renew, 6 years years later (technically 4, after the initial order exprired) they never would have received my order in the first place. And "all for a stinking calculator"....as my daughter likes to say....LOL

Anyway, back to lawn care companies.

Applying fertilizer to your own lawn really isn't that difficult. You save over 50% if you do it yourself. We buy generic Kmart brand fertilizer, which saves us even more. You can't tell the difference between name brands and generic. If applying granular, wait until the ground is dry and make sure you overlap your rows (so you don't end up with a striped lawn!)......

[Stephanie]

Actually, Kmart's lawn care products and other gardening products work very well.

Marty takes care of our lawn and is very proud of it. It always looks great. I do the edging and the trimming though. I get a chuckle every Spring and Summer when we get the flyers from Tru-Green or some other lawn care place. I want to say to them "we're doing very well on our own, thank you very much".