Gato Guard Services Inc

I hired them to bring my lawn back. They said they could. After a few treatments, my lawn was far worse than when they began. I fired them and now I need to sod parts of my lawn. I called and emailed several times to address this. I wanted to allow them to do the right thing and buy some sod (maybe 20 pieces) for me to replace what they had ruined instead of just leaving a negative review. I finally received a call back and he was VERY RUDE and ARGUMENTATIVE! He would not send me the before and after pictures. He said he'd come over and show them to me. What? Really? Is that how it works? I'll wait to see him and the pictures and explain the obvious. It's now my duty to leave this negative review. There are plenty of other bad reviews so be sure to read them all. I wish I would have.

All went well for the first few months. Then everything went off the rails. The tech came out for a fire ant issue in the back yard. They lumped the ant issue with the regular visit for lawn maint (no issue here for this) So they did their thing, on Saturday we went out to mow the lawn and noticed more fire ants. Since they do not work Saturday or Sunday, we were forced to not use our back yard due to allergies. Sent them an email on Saturday, they called on Monday and would be out in 2 days. Same tech shows up, proceeds to tell me he made a special extra strength batch for the ants. He drags the hose to the back yard and sprays the entire area by the fence and a few spot areas. Fast forward 4 more days, the front yard has all blotchy (dead) due to the tech stopping to take phone calls and the chemicals drippling out of the walk behind machine. Then I noticed the back yard, it looks like a horror show. Every area he treated for the ants is dead. I made several calls to the shop and eventually received a call from a salesman offering to fix it for free. It says something when a customer would rather cancel the service even though its free. I said several times, for the owner to call me and as of date, he has yet to call me. This is the kicker, had the owner just called and said, sorry we screwed up, I would have thought about staying with them. Atleast till I started calling around and seeing that I was essentially paying about 3 times what my neighbors do for their service with other companies. Since Angies List does not have a way to upload photos. I am linking to a few on imgur. Quite honestly, I should hire an attorney for this as it will require several pallets of sod. Here are the "after" pictures of their work: http://imgur.com/a/Pnixu

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unknown

The lawn didn't improve after 12 months, in fact got worse. Called several times over mushrooms growing, and this wasn't addressed. Also had issues with the pest control. They were supposed to clean up the outside (spider webs, etc), which didn't seem to get done.

Contracted with Gato in July of this year for service on a home that was bank owned for about 2 years. Needless to say, the lawn needed a little work and certainly had our share of spiders and other pests to deal with. Gato provided initially pass through the home. Said they would need to start off aggressively at the beginning then move into maintenance mode. They forgot about the aggressive start, so I had to make several calls to get them out for the first few months. They did respond and the place does look a lot better than it did. You just need to remind them of conversations and keep them to their word. All in all, not bad.

They do a great job. I appreciate their honesty and their integrity. Years ago, I worked in this field, and I know what's right and what's wrong. John Gato was very honest and straightforward. I would recommend him to everyone.