Advice, assistance, charts etc etc

Hi guys, we work in he St. Louis area and hold a large contract that is vital to our company. I have a three man lawn crew working down there and they are very dependable and do everything we ask. i have inspected their work on a few occasions and everything is fine. Today i get a call and several emails from the company we are mowing for complaining of tall grass. I know for fact the boys have been mowing these yardas as for I have been in to check. Our mowers are set at a two inch mowing height and the yards are on a 7 day cycle as for we can only mow once a week. I personally did not think any of the yards were out of hand by no means. But i am gettin complaints and with out this contract, my company is done it is my back bone. Can anyone shoot me toward a grass growing chart for my area to see how much it will grow in one week or anything of the such. They think we are not mowing when we are. i doccument everything and have shown that to her. have even offered to remove a few of the properties from the invoice tryin to keep them happy. What can i do??? We need some advice here. Kevin White younginnovations@live.com 636-221-5572

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

Kevin, Can you get an exact area of the complaint? If this is a large area with multiple properties, maybe something is being missed or maybe this complaint is unfounded and someone is trying to simply cause problems?

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[mark123]

An overfertilized lawn can grow about 12" in 7 days. Find out if someone is blasting it with quick-release fertilizer or if they just are trying to wiggle out of the contract.

There is a little rivalry in this area. One of the mowing guys used to work for the fertilizing guy so the fert guy blasts all his lawns. The mowing guy bags all the lawns to strip out the extra nutrients to slow down the surge growth. Actually, they are both just abusing the lawns.

There are 67 yards on the contract. All the yards are spread throughout North County. I do have a few addresses she emailed me and plan first thing in the morning to check them out.


To the other fellow who responed, we do not apply any fert as for the area we work in is in all honesty the getto. They are rough neighbor hoods. I cant see our competition throwing fert onto the properties but wont rule that out. I will know more in the morning when I go in and have a look myself. But i specificly have the lawn crew write in times and dates they were on a property and I go through each one when i do the weekly invoice.

Now the mention of wiggleing out of the contract: I really doubt that cause we bid it really low just to get our company off the ground. Our work we try to go above and beyond. I usually speak with the asset manager daily over property borders and such and all I hear is how good a job we are doing and how fast we respond to questions or concerns. She just feels that we are not cutting the grass cause it is growing so fast when in fact we are cutting and even tryin to rotate them each week so it does not get like this>

I am about at a loss as to how to handle this. I cant loose this contract.

[Steve]

I look forwards to hearing what you find out tomorrow. I figure that's the first step in resolving this situation. You gotta know whats going on first hand.

Keep us posted.