TLC Organic Lawn Care

Went very well. Called before all applications by owner. Courteous, knowledgeable service. Everything is explained well.

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Just a horrible experience, the worst experience I?ve had from an Angie?s List service provider after many years of using the service.

Our next door neighbors informed us they had contacted TLC and we were interested in organic lawn care as we also have a toddler.  They came out and gave estimates, supposedly doing the same work to both lawns but ours would be less expensive because they were only to do our small front lawn.  We paid $350 for an over-seeding and four lawn treatments.  We- and our neighbors- were promised great looking lawns by July.  They completed the over-seeding and first two treatments in May and June.  They were in and out in matter of minutes and there was absolutely no progress with our lawn as was enthusiastically promised.  My wife mentioned the lack of progress and was told it was due to the invasive nature of the weeds and the well-established trees in your yard preventing the grass from growing.  These potential problems were never mentioned to us up front, instead were told about how pleased we would be with how our lawn would be looking. We never would have signed up if there would have been this little progress for this amount of money.  

They had not returned through mid-August so I sent an email requesting a pro-rated refund.  No response for a week so I sent another, again no response.  I sent a third email three weeks later and finally got a response.  I was offered a total refund of $35 (for two treatments of four, paid $350).  I obviously find this completely unacceptable and offering this type of refund to an unhappy customer clearly shows a lack of desire to rectify the situation in a reasonable manner.  I would strongly recommend avoiding using a company with this type of customer service. 

I was happy with the job that was done. There were a few things, though, not related to technical expertise, that could be improved. Tim and Kyle (I think that's right!) are pleasant young men, who came, did their work, and left. They were polite and easy to talk to. However, I had to call them to say "About half the dead grass has grown back; is that normal?" I had expected them to do at least a drive by to see how things were going. Now that the grass is growing, it's growing back in a kind of patchy way; I called to ask if I should rake the surface of the areas that are not growing grass, should I overseed, what? I was told that I could rake the surface a little, but there should be plenty of seed there. OK, then, why isn't it growing?I still don't know what kinds of soil amendments, if any, have been put on my yard. I was told that a soil sample was being sent to Cornell; when I asked about results, I was told that Cornell's been unreliable in getting samples analyzed lately, so they didn't do it, and instead did a pH test. Well, OK... but what did you find out, and what did you do about it, if indeed anything needed to be done?Now that grass is growing, I don't know what to do about mowing. It's growing, and what's out there is getting satisfyingly long, but it's still sparse. I can of course search the internet for information about how to maintain my new young lawn, but shouldn't I have been left with some written instructions?I think these guys know what they're doing technically, and their business seems well-equipped. But there's a question of customer care that is a little lacking. I think my lawn is going to look pretty good, but I don't know what to do from here on out, and I haven't been given any guidance.  My advice to them is to keep doing what they're doing, but work up a couple of sheets: "What To Expect" so that people have an understanding of how the organic methods work (in general they take longer than chemicals do)  and maybe "What's Next?" to guide customers on watering and mowing. And aftercare... how do I fertilize my lawn? I believe that weed control from now on is going to be me with a dandelion digger, but is that necessarily the case? Customers need to know these things, and shouldn't have to ask.