6 Tips for Hiring a Lawn Care Service
Here are some helpful tips to consider when searching for a lawn care provider this spring.
Insurance: You should request to see this from any potential lawn company. Many smaller operations say they carry insurance, but unfortunately that is not true a lot of the time. Request a copy of their insurance before allowing them to service your lawn. Here at Green’s Lawncare, we provide you with a copy to keep on file.
Equipment: Ask the company how they maintain their equipment. Do they have service logs on their equipment? Do they sharpen their blades on a regular basis? If they do not keep services logs on their equipment a few things could happen. One being unexpected breakdowns which can result in faulty service schedules. Mowing blades should be sharpened every 8-10 hours of use. Dull blades can damage the grass leaving it ripped and brown in appearance. A professional can tell the difference in a blade of grass between sharp and dull blades.
Contracts: Some companies require clients to sign contracts to do business. We believe in a gentleman’s handshake and their word when it comes to weekly maintenance. Often times, you will sign a contract and the company will service your property even when the grass is not growing during the late summer drought. That practice is not good for the lawn. You can cancel our service agreement at any time…we have to earn our keep each week and we would like to keep it that way.
Services Offered: It’s a pain to have one company cut your grass, another company do the hedges, and yet another pull weeds and mulch to the flower beds. Make sure to ask up front what all services a company offers before doing business with them. This is especially true if you’re signing a contract. You don’t want to be making phone calls later in the season to another lawn company, because you find out that your lawn guy won’t trim the hedges. We also have a network of service professionals that can handle some of the work we do not perform, like tree work or dog waste removal.
Employee Background Checks: Many lawn care companies will hire the first individual they can find off Craigslist. Not good. Any individual who sets foot on your property, or has access to a gate code, needs to be of sound character. Make sure the company you go with vets their employees. Any company built on integrity will perform a background check on their employees.
Customer Service: Make sure the company you decide to hire answers their phones and responds to emails in a timely manner. The lawn care industry gets such a bad rap when it comes to professionalism. We are on a mission to change that ideology. We hang our hat on excellent customer service and we invest heavily on technology to do just that! You will even be able to create a login to your own account. You can see when we have performed services on your property that are time stamped and GPS tracked! How cool 🙂
I hope this list of items can help you come spring time to make a sound decision when it comes to hiring a company to service your property on a regular basis. We hear these complaints all of the time and decided to compile this list to help you vet lawn care companies that don’t treat you with the respect you deserve!