Tired of dealing with Chemlawn yards!! [Archive] - LawnSite.com™

LAWNGODFATHER

07-09-2001, 03:18 AM

I guess iI am lucky

I only have 2 customers that use chemlawn their lawns suck and are full of clover but the grass grows so fast it hides it

I sold the others my program and their lawns never looked so good

I was just thinking about chemlawn the ather day they are the corporate entity we will never be able to stop or control

their lawns grow very fast and are vary unhealthy and are usually the first to burn out

but before I started fertilizing I used to call chemlawn and pretend I was the customer and tell them back off on the fert and they did

you can charge them more for double and tripple cutting too

Keith

07-09-2001, 03:21 AM

Originally posted by AVRECON
Its been my expierience that when they (Chem Lawn) stops spraying the yards die. Its like they are spraying crack for lawns, LOL! Let your customers know That you aren't the culprit when they cancel those contracts with Chem Lawn.

good observation :D They have f'ed up many of our lawns. Customers can't even get rid of these people either. I have a lawn that never looked worth a crap until they stopped doing it. The customer dropped them, the lawn was looking right, and then they show up and screw it up, three months after they cancelled. Then left a bill on the door for $102

Last December, them and others bombed many lawns around with loads of nitrogen to make them green. It froze .....hard. They looked like they had been set ablaze :eek:

HOMER

07-09-2001, 06:48 AM

Funny you should mention that! I was thinking the same thing the other day. We have a local company that does the same thing. Takes me so long to do my trimming because the grass is so over grown after one week. I thought about dropping the account because of this. There aint nothing no worse than Bermuda that is 6" tall in places..........especially in the corners and low spots that have to be trimmed. Gotta run over the yard 4 or 5 times to mulch it all in.

I may drop them anyway. I could do the same thing with 13-13-13 and make the yard more managable. And no, they haven't killed all the weeds either.

crazygator

07-09-2001, 09:51 AM

This is really weird. Just as I was reading through this post, who drives by? Mr. Chemlawn. Think it was ESP or something? LOL! Quess I will just have to spread out the old police spike strip across the road! HA.

joshua

07-09-2001, 02:15 PM

ohh man this is a great thread, not to bad mouth chem lawn but in my area thier lawns suck, i've seen homeowners fert. their lawns better than chem lawns office, their office looks terrible and their lawns are even worse. i'm gunna take a pic of their office and post it when i have time.

Scraper

07-09-2001, 02:26 PM

This post is sooo true! Although for the most part my customers which had Chemlawn (note I said "had" as I have since taken all of Chemlawn's accounts which I service) had lawns which showed no affect from applications. Their lawns would be yellow and looking in ill health even a week after a supposed application. Not to mention full of dandelions, clover, and crabgrass just to name a few. I have my doubts on whether Chemlawn around here is even applying anything other than cat litter. Now a few customers which still have service provided by Trugreen and Custom Lawn Care have the overferilization problem...or rather shall I say over nitrogen problem. Middle of July and the lawn is 6" high. As these customers have already committed to a seasonal contract (via paying in advance) I have givcen them the option of switching to my services as of next season or else they will have to find another service to care for their lawn. I sell them on the fact that I am on their lawn weekly and and as such I can see what problems may be arising instead of just coming out and throwing down whatever the route sheet says need to be thrown.

If Chemlawn is reading this...beware as the word is getting out in this area that results are not as you say and I will be taking more of your accounts!:blob3:

Twotoros

07-09-2001, 02:31 PM

Chemlawn or joe blow spraying it is the same story. There are a number of spray fiends here and I have had it and let my customers know this season. Next year I will introduce a price list based on who they use to over fertilize. Starting with a 50% increase for the worst down to 10%. Or they can choose me and I will keep it green and if I over fert I will take care of it on my one dime.

scottb

07-09-2001, 02:34 PM

This is good info I just picked up a new lawn that is a Chemlawn yard. Right now it is a new lawn straw and all so it will be interesting to see how it does.

lawrence stone

07-09-2001, 03:33 PM

Originally posted by Scraper
As these customers have already committed to a seasonal contract (via paying in advance) I have givcen them the option of switching to my services as of next season or else they will have to find another service to care for their lawn. I sell them on the fact that I am on their lawn weekly and and as such I can see what problems may be arising instead of just coming out and throwing down whatever the route sheet says need to be thrown.

So you finally have taken my advice. If all real LCO's would stand their ground chemlawn will be history.

They can have that market where the homeowner mows and they
"apply" (100% urea).

I made the mistake of placing a classified ad for a month this spring and got nothing. I had one lady call me to mow and dethatch. But I would not do business with her since she had big green pumping out the urea. I told her to have chemlawn come and mow and dethactch.

I demand that I be the only contractor on the site. Stand your ground and cut these losers loose if needed. IMHO they need me more than I need them.

grassyfras

07-09-2001, 03:36 PM

What does IMHO mean?

jeffyr

07-09-2001, 03:42 PM

In My Honest Opinion
or
In My Humble Opinion

SemiPro

07-09-2001, 04:15 PM

Internet Acronyms Dictionary (http://home3.inet.tele.dk/hgaarde/Acronyms.html)

Lawn Dog2001

07-09-2001, 04:30 PM

Beleive me! I have enough material to sit here and bad mouth Chem Lawn all day. I have a grass cutting customer who has about 7000 sq ft of property. I have been servicing her for 3 years now. Chem lawn cut her grass before I did. I charge her $25 and it takes us about 15-20min to servivce. Well at the begining of this year Chem Lawn started billing her for my cuttings at a price of $47.50 a cut. She said she never saw them at her property once, and they would always leave an invoice the day after we cut. It took myself and the customer several calls before we got them to stop doing this. Apparently She had never been taken off the list, and when the cutters came and saw the lawn cut, they just assumed another Chem Lawn truck had serviced the account so they would leave bills.( NOT THAT I BUY THAT) After we figured out what happened they still tried to collect the money from her. I told the lady at Chem Lawn that if I ever see a Chem Lawn employee trying to service or invoice one of my customers again, they better charge a lot more than $47.50 to be worth the beating I will put on them. She hung up on me but I assume they got the message because they stopped billing my customer for those services.

crazygator

07-09-2001, 05:05 PM

Can any of their customers read CHEMLAWN, as in chemical lawn. I get a kick out the ones who think they have the greatest lawn with this service. As if they have 1 up on their next door neighbor. What these people don't know is that we are over next door taking care of the lawn, and Chemlawn is just spraying or painting on the green. I think I will try to sell them some green spray paint and redo the label to read "Chemlawn in a can". HAHAHA! And have you guys and gals gotten the same dirty looks from the chemlawn guys as us? As if we are inferior to them or something? WHATEVER!

BerksLawn

07-09-2001, 05:14 PM

One of our customers neighbors had chemlawn and they worked at a lab. Well they took in a sample and found out all they put down was water. Only a few of our yards have it mostly for grub treatment but i dont think it works.

MATTHEW

07-09-2001, 10:04 PM

Let us get it staight. Before 1993 Chemlawn was the best outfit out there. But since Servicemaster bought them out, they really
went downhill. Now called Tru-green Chemlawn, they sometimes
will admit the truth that they are not a lawn care co. but a marketing co.!!!!!! The sales staff gets paid the big bucks-sometimes as high as $50,000! While the lawn techs (usually a
23 year old kid with no training) will get $25,000 if he can run across 50 yards a day! I worked for them for 10 years. I have many plaques for being a top specialist. The name of the game is to fert-fert-fert. Liquid as much as possible. We were forced to spray lawns in the 95 degree drought-over 2' of leaves-over 3"
of snow! If the customer complained, just give them a free fert!
If they did'nt-oh well, pay the bill.
If the smaller outfits can just get the TG-CL customers to try us,
they would never go back! Some people are so gullible. They think they are getting the best service out there because of the "name". I still cannot believe that people will pay a $75.00
bill for fert sprayed over 2" of leaves-but they do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CandJ

07-09-2001, 10:48 PM

I have a very picky customer that is using Chemlawn this year. She calls me the other day and says the Chemlawn guy told her my mower was tearing the grass because my blades aren't sharp. Now, I sharpen or replace my blades every day, and they are sharp, I promise you. I didn't realize that Chemlawn was into mowing, but maybe that's a way of them getting people to sign on with them.

Evan528

07-09-2001, 10:58 PM

My mowers will not even touch a lawn treated by chemlawn! Either I treat there lawn or they find someone else!

Wood Lawn Man

07-09-2001, 11:05 PM

Around here it seems as though Chemlawn is going to great lengths to pick up new customers. Apart from the usual mass telemarketing, they are also going door to door on many commercial accounts and bidding out chemicals and mowing. The kicker is that they bid the mowing out at dirt cheap and turn around and sub it out to smaller local LCO's for a loss. We have yet to lose an account to them, but I do get a kick out of the many fliers I get from them. MONEY WELL SPENT CHEMLAWN!!!

Kent Lawns

07-09-2001, 11:15 PM

Being that their business does over $1,000,000.00 per business DAY, I'd say they have a good idea what they're doing.

I don't like them either, but I wouldn't understimate their business savvy.

LAWNGODFATHER

07-09-2001, 11:18 PM

Remember earlier in this Thread I said Tru-Green, Chemlawn, ServiceMaster, We Serve, Molly Maids, or what ever, they are into, is the corporate entity we will not be able to stop or control!

or even understand!

here is what we did to them today

now rember there is nothing wrong with this lawn except it needs to be watered and fertilized again

we had Chemlawn come out and give their "14 point analysis"
so they came out and inspected the lawn and came up with it has lots of diseases, grub, fungus, etc.....

not one did they mention water or fert

called again to redo their analysis

sent another guy same thing but added fert program

girl friend called remember same house same lawn

third guy same thing and fert program

not one guy mentioned water and the fact that the lawn was sodded earlier this spring with Zoysia from big rolls that a golf course gave us

(buy the way free Zoysia sod 13 acres left)

the guy with me happen to work for the attorney generals office
no that can't be good for Chem lawn

they tried to sell us every thing they could sell

no that was a bad showing from chemlawn there where others that where call to figue out this lawn but most where on the money but chemlawn did real bad

there's a bad burn for Chemlawn your welcome LGF
:angel:

SLS

07-10-2001, 12:00 AM

None of my existing accounts use a "Chem-lawn" type of service.

My sole experience with them was years ago I was on a painting crew doing a exterior re-paint. I had on a pair of those white painters overalls and walked across a freshly treated lawn. The grass was about 6 inches tall and the bottom half of my "whites" looked like a dog has pi$$ed on them...nice and yellow! :rolleyes:

No dog pee lawn treatment for me please. :D

Evan528

07-10-2001, 12:04 AM

Ive been wandering what florencent yellow herbicide they are spraying.... i thought all dyes were red or blue......

joshua

07-10-2001, 01:11 AM

wait, i think i might have something better, at one of my funeral homes, i told the director that some bent grass was starting to creep into the lawn and for him to call true chem.( thats who does his fert.) and he calls them and tells them to spray it to get it out, granted it was only a patch about 6x4 but thats most of the front, so they spray the whole yard with urea, thanks true chem i got to cut the lawn 3 days later bu i think they missed the spot with the bent its still their. or this might be even better, i've told customers to call true chem because they have grubs, they say thanks, next time i'm their to cut, the yard is twice as high as before, they muct of misunder stood my customer when she said we have grubs, not we want the lawn service here 3 days after they just cut it.
p.s. i have all my customer conviced when i get my applicators lic. to switch to me. on the lawn with grubs, geuss who had to spray it for grubs when the green paint wore off. sorry i knew i shouldn't off, but i don't want my customer losing her lawn due to their stupidity.

LAWNGODFATHER

07-10-2001, 01:52 AM

Originally posted by Evan528
Ive been wandering what florencent yellow herbicide they are spraying.... i thought all dyes were red or blue......

pendamethalyen I don't know if my spelling is correct
but thats what it is crabgrass contoll don't know why they are still spraying it but that what it is

by the way dyes can be any color you want (key word dye)
but normaly it's blue or green turf marking colorant

LAWNGODFATHER

07-10-2001, 01:58 AM

Josh you would need a pesticide license to put grub control down

Keith

07-10-2001, 03:20 AM

Originally posted by CandJ
I have a very picky customer that is using Chemlawn this year. She calls me the other day and says the Chemlawn guy told her my mower was tearing the grass because my blades aren't sharp. Now, I sharpen or replace my blades every day, and they are sharp, I promise you. I didn't realize that Chemlawn was into mowing, but maybe that's a way of them getting people to sign on with them.

ah yes, a classic there :D They love to blame everyone but themselves for messing up the lawn. Its not dull blades, it's the 4 inch thatch layer their nitrogen bombs have created.

GrassChopper

07-10-2001, 11:34 PM

I had a Chem Lawn guy tell one of my customers that I cut her grass too short (4"). I caught the guy down the street telling one of my other customers that he had Gray Leaf Spot, Brown Patch, Grubs, Chinch Bugs and Mole Crickets. Since I saw him drive up to the house, I know he didn't even get down and look at the grass. He analyzed the grass while walking up to the front door. Needless to say, I gave him a piece of my mind. The woman who he told that I cut the grass too short dropped me too!!

97Stroker

07-11-2001, 07:30 PM

Hey wait a second I work for chem lawn.......................just kidding. Anyways, I live in RI and the chem lawn guys around here are ok. They don't give us dirty looks, they dont cut grass, they never talk crap either. However, real funny story, this guy in town, started his own chem lawn spraying. So he was out in this guys yard, and I guess he ran outta dye. So he picked up some RED dye some place. He sprayed it on this guys yard, and it was the brightest pink you have ever seen!!!!!!!!!Needless to say he lost that customer :p

J. Davis

07-11-2001, 07:45 PM

I have a local high school that I cut every 10 days....They just hired this company Chem...who cares...and they are dumping the fert... to this bermunda...lawn(4acres) In the deep south we are getting a large amount of rain and sun shines this year...Put these items in the same place, and man the grass will grow...The man that is over the school made this statement....The grass looks great when you cut it...but it grow so fast....Dah
In 10 days the grass is 6 inches and he!! to cut...What can you do with the people or the chem. :angry:

kturner

07-11-2001, 10:04 PM

I don't know if this was the best move, but I have to be honest.

I have a customer we do full service for. We've been with him a year and he just started complaining about his lawn. We have talked to them several times about the lack of watering. We know the contractor who put in the landscape and he said they skimped on the lawn irrigation. We have asked them and left notes asking for access to the garage to check the irrigation timing, as is part of our maintenance agreement. The reply we get each time is: "It just rained a couple days ago, the water shouldn't be an issue." allrighty. We're in the middle of a drought here people. We dug into the turf with a hori-hori and it was like trying to drill cement.

They say that last year when Chemlawn was coming, the lawn always looked great. Ok, but did we have a very dry Spring last year? No.

This has been bugging me as I watch his lawn dry out in the last three weeks. I finally told him to get Chemlawn service and I would deduct that amount from his contract.

Two reasons I did this. One, I'm not going to jeapardize a $650/mo contract for $47.13 a month. Two, screw it, if he can't listen to sense and he is angry at me for his problem, then let him solve it with his wonder chemicals; leave me the hell alone. I want to take bets on when he finally turns on the irrigation.

As a side note, as part of our service we do manual weeding to avoid using chemicals (we find this to be a general concern among the locals), and charge them for the extra time in their contract. This guy is one of our most sizable contracts and he asks us one day what we have against chemicals. He has decided that he doesn't like to see weeds at all and would rather we Preen them or something. Huh. I told him I don't like to, but if that would make him happy, of course we could. Now we spend about one third the time in his yard and still retain the original contract bid year round.

Some people.
You can take a horse to water...;)

HOMER

07-11-2001, 11:15 PM

Ha...............finally had a chance to unload on one of my customers today concerning her "spray guy". He kept telling her that I should be cutting the Bermuda at between 1 and 2 inches. I called him and explained to him that there was no way that bumpy a$$ lawn could be cut that short. He was having trouble getting it to green up! He said he would add some more fert. to it since I was going to take it down low. (just what I needed) I went and cut it a couple weeks ago, started out at 1.75" and made about a 10 ft pass.:D A week ago the "stripe" was still there and hadn't thought about greening back up. I raised the deck up enough to get it shorter but not scalp it like I had it at first.

She calls today to ask me to come a little earlier, her grass is getting long! She say's there are still some brown areas in the back yard:D that haven't come back yet. Huh, wonder why? Let her know what I thought about the chem. guy and his theory's and liquid fert. in general. "I was just doing what ya'll wanted me to!" I think I got my point across and I bet he has to use granular fert. from now on.

David Gretzmier

07-11-2001, 11:39 PM

WOW- we should call this the I hate chemlawn thread. I hate the over ferting too, but I gotta tell you , the chemlawn lawns I see look alot better than the untreated lawns. they are greener and less weeds. I do a better job, but hey, they can't treat EVERYONE bad. they'd be out of business. Dave g

HOMER

07-12-2001, 12:20 AM

I would rather have consistency than yo-yo fertilizing. One month they look good, hard as heck to cut, but they look good. The next month as the liquid junk starts to fade away the yard will look a little shabby again, easier to mow and trim though. Next month when they spray it's back to double and triple cutting to get rid of all the clippings. That's the problem I have with it, not the business itself. Some of this Bermuda gets so thick it stalls out your trimmers. I've fertilized Bermuda before and done it with granular....15-15-15, 13-13-13, 34-0-0 and even 8-8-8. None of them had that explosive growth that they get with liquid and they were much easier to maintain and stayed just as green.

LAWNGODFATHER

07-12-2001, 02:12 AM

the thing about fert and sparying is doing it correctly
granular fer not liquid all at once release
slow release liquid is vary expensive to expensive even for CL
liquid fert is cheap when it come 1000 gal at a time
they use liquid fer and weed killer for a 1 pass job

BLakin01

07-12-2001, 09:17 PM

Well, gotta story for you. We've got 2 yards that are right next to each other. We got the one account a few years ago (no Chemlawn on this lawn ever), and the other one we picked up last year. Well, the new guy (local car dealer, loaded, doesn't care about money) called up my boss for an estimate. Boss went over there, and immediately saw that he had been using Chemlawn. Well, the guy says, "Why don't we make it easy on you, and you can just cut these 2 yards at the same time, rather than doing one then the other, and you can focus your time on other jobs?" Well boss said ok, but told him that if we did that, then he would have one guy in front with Walker ZTR with grass catcher, and one guy in back with new John Deere GT235, and that it would leave clippings on his lawn. He said not a problem, because we could probably get to it quicker than he could anyways. Well, this year, we had an unseasonably wet spring, and what do you know, the Chemlawn yard really took off. Well, he calls us up about 3 weeks ago, and says that he's had it, and that we had better start collecting the clippings on his whole yard and not half, or he would find someone else to mow it. Well, boss said that he would have to start charging double for him to start picking up clippings, and he said fine. Whatever it took to get the job done. Well, what do you know, we've hit a drought. These people don't water, so therefore the stuff that Mr. Chemlawn is putting down is burning their yard, and it looks absolutely horrible. It looks nice for about a day after they come, but then the paint wears off. Right now, the other yard that has never been fertilized or watered (except for rain) is doing about 10 times better than the other. I think I would take my $100 a month or whatever he is paying to Chemlawn and invest in an irrigation system. It's not like he can't afford it.

Brandon Lakin
B&H Mowing Service
Rensselaer, IN

kturner

07-12-2001, 10:56 PM

If you can believe it, he's got it but thinks he is conserving water or something. Nothing we can say can convince him to turn the bugger on or let us inspect it. And that was part of the contract bid!!

I can't wait to see what his precious Chemlawn does.

:eek:

65hoss

08-27-2001, 09:51 PM

I thought I would do an update. Where is Chemlawn now? All these lawns are going dormant and looking really bad. They need there chemical addiction fix.;)

I am very glad they have finally slowed to a reasonable growth.

yergus

08-28-2001, 05:36 PM

PLEASE DO NOT TALK ABOUT CHEM LAWN. THEY ARE VERY BIG IN THE ST. LOUIS AREA AND EVERYTIME I SEE THEM PARKED ON THE STREET AND SERVICING A LAWN, I KNOW WHO MY FUTURE CUSTOMER WILL BE.
BECAUSE OF THEM, I GET MORE BUSINESS, AND GIVE A BETTER SERVICE.
THANK YOU CHEM LAWN, HOPE TO SEE YOU REAL SOON

Twotoros

08-28-2001, 09:02 PM

I lost a lawn because of a chem lawn type here. The customer had them over to fix sprinkler problems and then they sprayed. Then said because her lawn was stressed a little for lack of water they would give it a granular kicker in a week. Two fertilizings and a week later I am getting hammered with 6-8" of growth a week and I am getting the "can you mow it shorter speech". The whole time I am trying to cut it at 2&1/2" as usual for this lawn . She claims I am not and a couple of weeks later I am dumped. I warned all my customers about over fertilizing this season but I may as well talk to the lawn instead. :cry:

grassyfras

08-28-2001, 10:52 PM

yergus- what area do you work in in st louis? Chemlawn is huge here but i rather have my customers use them then nothing at all i hate to say they do keep me cutting. With out somthing on there lawn i dont get to cut it and it looks like crap and for some reson thats always my faulght, but if chemlawn is doing it when i mow i get to cut thats the bottom line for me i know they suck at killing weeds but thats not my problem