R & A LAWN MAINTENANCE

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My yard is 3/4 of an acre. Last year another company removed leaves, did a perfect fall clean-up of the flower beds, and trimmed all the bushes for $330 total. This year R & A Lawn Maintenance claimed their work took 20 hours (at one point said 25 hours), and billed me $830: $39/hour/man for 5 workers plus $50 for dumping the leaves. I was home for approximately 20 minutes while they were working and watched two of the workers, each standing in one place and blowing and blowing and blowing one small spot on the grass (until dust clouds rose from the grass in one case) as if determined to move that one last leaf with the blower or die trying. The company owner did not see the yard before the work was done and was not present to see his employees working, yet he gave me one excuse after another for the $830 price on the phone. (At one point he said, "We didn't just do your leaves. We did a lot of other stuff, too. The leaves alone would cost $200-$300." So was he charging me $500-$600 for trimming my bushes?) When he told me the price was $830, I insisted that he meet me at my house and look at the yard. When he saw the yard, he was full of excuses, kept talking and talking so I couldn't get a word in edgewise, and was unable to offer a single rational explanation of how the job could take 20 hours to complete. Thank goodness I had a witness to the meeting, who finally cut off his excuses. I offered to pay him $450--$120 more than I paid the previous year for more work than his crew had performed, and he angrily took the check. Do not hire this company to perform any work of any kind without a firm, written, signed bid in hand.