I contracted with Paramount Landscaping to aerate, top-dress, and overseed my front lawn for a price of $467.14 ($413.40 + HST). The contract was signed and full amount paid April 12, 2012. (The cheque #225 cleared my bank on April 16.)
No one came to the property until May 14, when two men from another company arrived at about 4:30pm. (Apparently Paramount had sub-contracted to a third party.) One of the men went over the whole lawn with the aerator. The other hand shovelled top soil onto some small damaged patches along the property line (left over from sewer repairs next door), but 95% of the lawn got no top-soil. Then this second man pushed a spreader around the lawn with grass seed. They finished, loaded the spreader and aerator back in their trucks and left by 5pm.
The aeration and overseeding we asked for were done satisfactorily, as was the patch repair (which we hadn't asked for), but the top-dressing was not done at all except for the repaired patches. (Top dressing is the process of applying a thin layer -1/2" to 1" - of topsoil and/or compost over the lawn, and raking it into the existing grass.)
No one from Paramount was present during the work, nor did anyone from Paramount inspect the work afterwards.
I assumed this was a mis-communication between Paramount and this third party sub-contractor -and called Paramount right away. (My contact at Paramount was Jeff, Sales Manager.) He promised to talk to "his operations person" and get back to me, but didn't call back After a couple of days I called him again, and we repeated this pattern for several weeks: I call, he promises to look into it with the operations manager and get back to me, he doesn't call back, I call again, et cetera.
Jeff did stop by after a few calls to look at the lawn, and agreed that there had been no topsoil spread. At no point did the operations manager inspect the subcontracted work, despite my repeated requests he do so.
So I paid over $450 for half an hour's work by two men, plus about $20 worth of seed & soil, and the primary part of the job we contracted for was never done at all.
UPDATE after Paramount's reply: Note that it took Paramount over two years to reply to my review (August 2013 to September 2015). Perhaps if they had returned my repeated phone calls two years ago, we could have avoided the review entirely. The facts they quote are wrong: The lawn is not 5000 sq. ft. as they claim, but just under 1200 sq. ft. (they only were contracted for the front lawn, and never went into the back). Again, had anyone from Paramount actually been here, they might have noticed the difference in size. And as someone who has had a lawn for many years, I know the difference between Top Dressing and Over-Seeding. (I have a spreader and overseed myself on a regular basis.) The contract was done after long discussion with Paramount's sale man and I specified exactly what I wanted. If it should have cost 4x as much, he should have quoted 4x as much. (Although given that my lawn is only 1/4 the size Paramount claims, I'd guess he did quote correctly.)
This is the only negative review of a tradesman I've eve left, but my rating of zero stands.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $467.14
- Company Response
Brandon,
Sorry about your experience, back a few years ago we used a very reliable subcontractor (Turf systems) to do our fertilizing and over seeding because they had a great system in place for our clients. The top-dress and seeding you contracted us for was a over-seeding program that doesn't require topsoil. We use granular enhanced soil that is spread by way of a fertilizer spreader, please see the link below http://www.turfrevolution.com. This is a no hassle, no mess way to get an inexpensive top dressing to your property. As you mentioned above we sent two specialists to your house and aerated your lawn, spread granular topsoil and seed for only 467.14. Traditionally doing it the old fashion way which is what you were expecting would have cost 4 times what you paid for 5000 sq. ft. If you read the documents we sent you or looked at our program online you would have seen how would provide our product. That soil and seed they spread on your property is not cheap and actually cost over 250.00 dollars to buy. The costs for the topsoil we used at a price of 30.00$ a bag per at 1 bag per 1000 sq. ft. would equal 150.00. The seed is top of the line certified endophyte enhanced seed and cost about 120.00 a bag which covers 5500 sq. ft., basically your property size. The cost of the product for your property with tax is close to 300.00. That leaves 167.14 to pay the employees, equipment, overhead for the company, the government HST and profit.
Turf systems is a top of the line company with thousands of customers and although we now supply all our own lawn care applications, they do a great job, I would recommend them to anyone. This was the only complaint we had about their system and product in the 3 years we used them. They definitely supplied over 100 of our customers with this product in the three years of service including my own property.