ALL WOMEN'S LANDSCAPING

We hired All Women's Landscaping in October of 2014 to get our yard up to HOA standards and so that it would be pretty for the guests we have coming in for our wedding October 25.    Our yard was in disrepair due to another lawn maint service being unreliable, and our inability to do the work ourselves.
I left a message on the voice mail and was contacted by the owner's daughter who said she subcontracts for her mother Debbie Irwin.  Chrystal (I believe was her name) and her husband came out and gave us an estimate for cleaning up, weeding, trimming bushes, and laying mulch.   The estimate was for $450.  We also made an agreement that they would come out and maintain our landscaping for $25.00 a month.   The work kept getting put off until closer and closer to the wedding as well as our HOA deadline.  We scraped by just under both.  Since the estimate for mulch was too low, we provided extra cash for the mulch, and were owed about $15.00 back.  The agreement was that the $15.00 would be applied to our monthly maintenance.  
I called several times to inquire as to why no maintenance was being done on our property.  I did not receive a  call back.  I also left messages on the All Women's Landscaping facebook page.  Eventually Debbie got in touch with us with a litany of reasons that they had not been out including the fact that her daughter had proven unreliable and undependable.  After that discussion it took multiple phone calls to get her out here to do what she gave us an estimate for.  I said directly, if this is not going to work just say so.   We paid Debbie a clean up amount of $225.00  and made an agreement for $65.00 a month monthly maintenance.  She disappeared once again, and once again we got a notice from our HOA warning us that our landscaping was out of code.  I began calling Debbie again.  It took multiple messages and phone calls to get her back out.  She wanted to charge us $130 for clean up and maintenance.   We tried to argue this amount as she had fallen behind on her agreement and did not feel it fair to pay another large chunk for things that should have been regularly maintained.  In the end my mother in law gave in.   She finally came out two weeks after the time she promised (which of course meant further disrepair with the rain), i had explanations of graduation ceremonies and car break downs.  But honestly at this point there is always, always something.  I am a patient and fair person, but this was ridiculous at this point.  
The day she came out was stormy and we had appointments, she required we leave the check before we went to do our appointments, and promised that if she did not finish she would be back to do so.  $130 later, only the front right of our house, the right side of our house to the pool door was done.  Debbie's own words were that her goal was to do that much to keep the HOA off our backs.  She did not return to finish her work, and she cashed the check.
Also, before we left, my mother in law found Debbie in our pool, in her work clothes, with dirt and trash from the work on them.  I wouldn't have minded her spraying off with the hose, and probably if she had asked we would have told her to go ahead and cool off after spraying off.  Instead she helped herself, not only the once she got caught, but another time the same day after we left.  We had to have our pool cleaned an additional time to deal with this.
While I am all for being comfortable while working, our neighbors complained about Debbie wearing only a bra while working, and I did observe this myself.  
I am so disappointed, and frankly hurt. Debbie comes across really friendly with her phone calls beginning with "Hey Lady" or "Hey Girl".  Unfortunately, that friendliness did not translate into keeping our yards done consistently, but it did equal paying out large amounts for clean ups that would not have been necessary with regular maintenance.  We will NOT be using them again, nor will we recommend them to others.

the deal was to weed and trim, to blow out all beds, spray beds with round up and to use round up on driveway and
side walk. a couple of crapemyrtles  trees were not finished beds were not done and NO round up done. 

most of reviews I read had the same complaint  also to write out check to husbands name.  she kept ducking my calls until the check cleared and I couldn't stop payment on it.  I think some sort of police action should be taken.??

you can use my name.

Suzanne Nichols

The day after this phone call, the owner, Debbie, phoned me that she was on her way to my house to look over the job.  I should have stopped right there, but since the price was $125.00, I figured there would not be much to the job and probably would not require expertise.  The first thing Debbie Erwin said was that she would need $60.00 for materials.  I was not in the practice of giving out funds in advance, but I did give her a $60.00 check.  In the course of the conversation, I mentioned the verbal quotation her daughter had given me, Debbie was all bent out of shape, and said that was only the labor. I wondered to myself later if this was their "modus operandi."  Chrystal did not give me a written quotation about this job just like she did not give me a written quotation for the weeding and trimming on the previous job.( A mistake that will not be repeated.)   Debbie did return a day or so later with some pipe which she cut in about four pieces - the width of the door and 3 or 4 bags of rocks and two stepping stones.  She proceeded to dig a big hole outside my patio door and began putting rocks and pieces of the pipe in this hole outside my door with the pipe going east to west not north to south away from the house.  She said she would need more rocks and I figured that she had not done this too often since she did not plan the materials correctly.   It was a Friday and she said she wanted more money for materials and also for labor.  She kept reassuring me she would be back on Monday - that she was coming back!  I wrote her a check for $100.00.

That was June  6, 2014 and I have not seen nor heard from Debbie Erwin since that day. She did NOT come back that Monday, June 9, 2014, nor at any other time.   I phoned her several times:  She did not take my calls.  I wrote her a two page letter repeating these facts and asked for the $100.00 back since she took my money under false pretenses.  She did not reply.

To this day, I still have the big hole outside my patio door.  It is a dangerous situation!   I cannot do this work myself.  What am I supposed to do with this UNFINISHED JOB CAUSED BY A PERSON WALKING AWAY FROM THE JOB AND WITH MY MONEY? 

Only Debbie, the owner, came for a couple of hours on three non sequential days.  Then the four of them came the afternoon of June 2, 2014 to finish the job and clean out my gutters as agreed.  There were six downspouts and the debris was located at the top of each downspout.  When the job was finished, I wrote the check out to the business, but Chrystal who was the one collecting the check told me the check should be made out to her husband.  I destroyed the first check and wrote another made out to Michael Erwin. in the amount of $350.00.  They seemed to do a good job, but only the weeds above the ground were removed.  I never saw weeds come back so quickly.

I have lived in my home over 35 years and have always personally weeded and trimmed.   Also for many years I also mowed all of my grass  and maintained all my equipment.   Unfortunately, I am now  84 years of age and must curtail this activity.  I was ill all winter and had surgery in the spring  I really needed help with this weeding and trimming (I have a man who cuts my grass).  I must say I had great expectations in employing All Women's Landscaping.  I have been so disappointed  and disillusioned.

That is not the end of my association with Debbie Erwin which I feel must be described in a separate complaint.  Unfortunately, since my second episode occurred, it has tainted my first association with her.