Father's day is almost upon us, so I started thinking of what kind of gift I could give my husband that will let him know that I appreciate him and all the hard work that he does around the house. I want to somehow acknowledge that I know he has a lot on his plate and still gets so much done for the family. I tried to think about what I could take off his plate, how I could lighten his load and give him the well deserved gift of more free time!
One of the many things on his "to do" list this year is the front lawn... more weeds than actual lawn, I should maybe refer to it as our front "area" as the word lawn is really no longer a descriptive word that can be associated with what we have in front of our house.
I do a quick Google search on "dandelions and Ottawa", the first company that pops up is Nutrilawn. This is great, I have heard of them and they even have a little video about their dandelion service which includes not only getting rid of weeds but also fertilising the grass in between the weeds. (I think we may have about 12 blades of grass in total). I figured that if they could get rid of the weeds, I could take care of throwing down some top soil and seeds
Last summer I spent hours upon hours with a borrowed weed extractor call THE CLAW which seemed to have the magic ability to create calluses on both hands while doubling the amount of weeds that grew back the next day. I was definitely not going that route again this year.
So I call Nutrilawn and they are more than happy to get me set up on their appointment books, they have a great deal if you pay in advance and agree to continue their service for next year as well. So I go ahead and sign up and I am told that they will come to my house within 7-10 days depending on weather as their product does not work in the rain - this was May 3rd.
They arrive for the first service on May 10th before anyone is out of bed and leave a flyer about what they have done and the care that we need to provide in the mean time between treatments. Explaining that once the weeds have disappeared I can go ahead with the top soil and seeding. Although I did notice that some of the weeds had been affected almost immediately, there are still a great deal of them going strong so I call them that day to find out when the next treatment date is set for. They set up the next visit for the 17th of May. So far so good.
The 17th of May comes and goes without a visit. I give them a couple of days leeway and then call them on the 25th of May. They indicate that they "have no record" of providing me with that date and tell me that in fact they try NOT to provide clients with dates for upcoming service appointments (now I see why)...and then they proceed to give me a date for my upcoming service appointment. REALLY?
They tell me that they will treat my lawn again on the 26th of May (so the following day) and that they will be there in the morning because we are the third lawn of the day to be done. The 26th happens to be the same day that I was planning a garage sale and when I tell them this they indicate it's not a problem because their treatments are not toxic and if I can just avoid putting my sale items on the lawn they can still come in and do the treatment. Perfect.
The 26th comes and goes without a visit...REALLY?
This morning I call them and get greeted by "Hello Nutrilawn how can I help you?" to which I reply "well after 2 missed visits, you can help me by giving me back my money and cancelling my contract.". The gentleman on the phone tells me that he will check my file to see what happened. He comes back and indicates that "the team went to your house to do the treatment and found that there were too many items on your back yard to be able to provide the treatment so they left". The issues with this are:
1. There is nothing on my back lawn
2. They were supposed to be providing service on the front lawn ONLY
3. I was sitting in my driveway from 7am to 3pm having a garage sale so unless they came in an unmarked car and/or they sent invisible workers...they never showed up.
Now I am angry...I go on to tell him that whoever provided that report to him "is 100% full of shit". At which point he indicates that I would have my money refunded and that my contract would indeed be cancelled.
Wow Nutrilawn...really? do you know there are approximately 60 other lawn companies in the Ottawa area alone that would gladly take my business? This is the service that you offer, it's what you do...and you can't even come to our house and at least spray water on our lawn??? Come on, I wouldn't know the difference, but to not even show up? REALLY?
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