...Pants on fire

It truly is alarming to consider that very few in the lawn care industry seem to care about the customer anymore once the cheque is signed, or the Visa is swiped.

Sure, you can eventually get someone on the phone if you're mad as hell about something, but why get your customer to the brink in the first place?

Here are some lessons in the glowing examples of blatant lying in order to get the money and run.

Now take into consideration a few of these come through the words of others and are classified as here-say, yet you should know what is apparently going on out there.

Lesson #1: I find it troubling to see the ads on a few garden centres' readerboards touting the use of nematodes to get rid of your grubs. Yes nematodes do work provided they are applied in the right conditions, after being stored in the right conditions, with the faith that these microscopic worms are even in the package in the first place instead of baggy of vermiculite, or a sponge with a brown blob on it.

However, selling them at the end of May....really?

I guess they are counting on the average customer to be dumber than a sack of hammers and desperate to try anything.

I've even heard of a few retailers who don't even bother to refrigerate the little buggers.

Good luck getting those dead nematodes to work.

Yet, even the manufacturer, who is making money hand-over-fist, is stocking the shelves while they know the more effective time to apply is in mid August.

Oh well....they can sell them to you again in the summer.

Man, no wonder I have so many people telling me nematodes don't work.


Lesson #2: There are a few companies out there, that I covered in a previous post, who seem to have lying to customers as part of their mission statement, all in an effort to expand the coffers with the almighty buck.

It has been everything, from erroneous information about the current weed killer of choice, Fiesta, to the constant upsell of products your lawn probably doesn't need, to -egad!- faking your confirmation of service and billing you for unwanted applications.

And if you're OK with all that then I have some swamp land in Florida you might be interested in.


Lesson #3: This one comes from personal experience so I have no problem dropping the name of the company- Rittenhouse.

This year I spent over 4G's on a new spray tank for one of our trucks only to have it leak Fiesta all over the back of the flatbed in only the second day of use. On the third day the spray gun fell apart because they decided using a plastic connector between the gun and the hose would be more efficient than spending $3.00 more to put a brass one in.

Hey don't believe me....check out the pics.




All this in the middle of the busiest part of the season.

Now, they did send me a replacement piece for the tank and why not? A plumber friend of mine told me they had attached it too tight in the first place and cracked it.

But the spray gun? I was told the tank and gun are not suitable for organic products like Liquid Corn Gluten and Fiesta.

Hello! You do know there's a Provincial bylaw now? Have you even heard of the PMRA...Ministry of the Environment....are you even listening?

I have another used tank that I bought for $400, 3 years ago and other than replacing the odd hose, it has given me no trouble at all spraying organics.

So you can understand why I am royally pissed.

I guess no one ever told these idiots that happy customers are repeat customers and they'll just soldier on with their P.T. Barnum way of thinking and caveat emptor.

*clapping* Way to screw yourself out of the potentially thousands of future dollars I could have spent with your company...was it really worth it?

This is one former customer who has no problem posting his displeasure with extreme prejudice to a world wide audience.

Here ends the lesson.