In the past I've dealt with GreenStuff and TruGreen and they're both OK, but in my experience there's often a disconnect between what the person on the phone promises you and what the tech in the field actually does. I'm not implying that there's any intent or collusion to dupe the customer, I'm just saying that the people on the phone will tell you almost anything to make you happy, but they have no real control over what the field techs do. Enter FJ Lawn Care's Jim Thiewes, who is the guy you talk to on the phone AND the guy who oversees day-to-day operations, including supervising the field techs. When he tells you something is going to get done the way you want it done (within reason, of course), it's going to happen. For the past couple of years, FJ Lawn Care has maintained my grass in the summer and removed snow from my sidewalks and driveways in the winter for two properties. I've been very happy with the work Jim and his crew provide. My lawns have never looked better and my mail carrier (who is notoriously fussy about snow removal) has never had less to complain about. In addition to routine lawn maintenance, FJ Lawn Care has also done fertilizing, weed control, and mulching for me. They do good work at a reasonable price and the best part of all, in my opinion, is that you can talk to the boss if you ever have questions or suggestions or in the rare case where you have a complaint. Jim will work with you to make sure that you get the attention you deserve. I've seen a review from an unhappy person on here and I can understand what made him or her unhappy. But based on my personal experience, I'm betting Jim never got a chance to make things right. Jim and his crew work hard to give their customers personalized service and you just don't find that with many companies any more. read more

I can't even give them a star since they never did my lawn. Starting in early March I contacted them. Since? Texts, calls, emails and 101 excuses. Too much info on all his troubles. I'm a customer not your family. I hired someone today who came out same day, gave me an estimate and will be taking care of my lawn this week. He was always very polite, just didn't follow through read more

This man is very unprofessional, rescheduled with me four times due to personal issues. Wants money upfront, finally agreed to do per time and then on the first snow he called at 4 o'clock in the morning to cancel at the last minute. Shares his professional life, which is very unprofessional. Please Beware. read more

Jane M DON'T USE Fj LAWN CARE FOR SNOW REMOVAL I called for an estimate for snow removal. Kelli said she would send me an estimate that day. She never sent me an estimate. I called the next morning and got the owner on the phone. He took my credit card info and said Kelli would get back to me. She didn't get in until after 10:30 AM. I received a transaction through my bank for $95 for Fj Lawn Care. I later received a statement in my email from Fj. I spoke with Kelli later that evening and she said she could reduce the price because I thought it was high. My front sidewalk was already plowed by my neighbor and I shoveled the front walk to the front door and the side door. They only had to shovel the back sidewalk and plow my driveway. They did a poor job and I would never use Fj Lawn Care. My neighbor commented on what a crappy job Fj Lawn Care did. I emailed Fj Lawn Care to tell them it was unprofessional and unsatisfactory for the $95 charge. It looks like 10 year-olds did it. I never heard back from them. I will call Handy Randy next time since I have heard many good references and the charge is half the price. read more

Unreliable and disorganized service. During the first lawn service, the man I corresponded with via email couldn't remember any of the specifics of what we discussed, which I found a little odd but figured it was just because they have a lot of customers. I had signed up for a bi-weekly mowing. that means every other week. They came on a Monday at first and said I might end up on the Tuesday rotation. Okay. June 24th was the first time they came. July 13th came around and they still hadn't returned, so I sent an email to see if they were planning on coming out again. They then came out that day and mowed. Had I not emailed, I'm not sure if/when they would have come around. A couple days later I got an "invoice" for three lawn services. Yep, three. I inquired as to why I was being charged for three when I'd only gotten two. I got an email back saying they bill on a cycle, and-even though my third mowing was going to happen the day after the bill was due- it was included on the invoice. But he said he'd "let it go" this time. Oh, thanks for the favor, buddy! You're not going to make me pay for a service I haven't gotten yet? That's awesome! I'm aware a lot of places like this bill on a cycle, and I'm willing to pay for something like that if the service has proven to be reliable. But considering I had to call and remind them to come out after almost three weeks, I was not too stoked to pay for something that may or may not happen. I cancelled my service immediately. read more

Asked me for payment info, then that I give him a five star review and NEVER showed to mow my lawn. Nor say a word to me. Terrible!

This is the worst company I have ever worked with! They do not follow through with what they promise. Do not communicate regarding service. Charged me for services not rendered, and provided a service without a bid.. at an outrageous fee! Crew is sloppy, leaving debris all over my driveway. Refuse to answer emails or voice messages regarding these issues. Do NOT give them your credit card.. they'll have a party with it! Better yet, just don't do business with them! read more

Doesn't deserve even 1 star. Authorized payed for an amount and three months later for an invoice of over $650. Said they did more work than actually received. Then harassed me for payment, over 20 voicemails/texts/emails in one day. Dishonest, disorganized, unreliable. Never use this company. read more

Just say "no" to FJ lawn care. Doesn't even deserve one star. Jim is an extremely unprofessional, belligerent and angry owner who renders unreliable and grossly overpriced promises that he doesn't deliver on. When I terminated the service after giving them many chances to redeem themselves (their number went into my speed dial since I had to call them so frequently to ask why they hadn't come), Jim, went BALLISTIC. I nearly called the police when he threatened that his crew would be 'very angry' whe he tells them he has to fire them because of me and that he would give them my name and that they 'know where I live'. Unfathomable. I called them on many occasions to say politely that no one had come to remove the snow and that I had to take a cab to work (and couldn't get my child to school on time) on more than one occasion because I couldn't get out of my driveway since they failed to arrive on time (despite the early service premium I was charged). I never received a call back, just too little, way too late sketchy, incomplete service. And, in the end unprofessional belligerence and illegal threats, for which there is simply no justification. Do not risk this guy's instability. He scared me and my family with his belligerence and threats simply for asking to terminate service due to unreliability. read more

Email to FJ followed by owner's response (copied exactly from email): Kim, we appreciate your professionalism and effort to try and make this right. I have outlined below our "items of contention" to illustrate why we remain disappointed that Jim was unable to make further concessions. 1. The $164.38 that was removed from the bill should not have been charged in the first place. FJ Lawn Care may have to pay their technicians for drive time, but the fact that his technician does not have a means of transportation should not be at our expense. 2. We were charged $90 for 2 technicians to spend an hour removing stuck equipment rather than doing the work we contracted. It would seem common sense that before they drive heavy equipment, the area should be surveyed to be sure there are not issues, especially a damp creek bed. This should not be at our expense. In addition, they chose to drive their pick-up, without our consent, onto our lawn in an area that is covered by our irrigation system, which has not been turned on yet, so we are not sure if there is any sprinkler heads damaged. However, they left a 2-foot mud skid in our front lawn - clearly visible to everyone that drives through the neighborhood. There was no acknowledgment of this damage, nor attempt to repair. 3. We were charged for 2 1/2 hours for 2 technicians for them to return to complete items (including retrieving a rake). Of this time, they only performed work for 30 minutes tops. We should not have to pay for any drive time, or the time they took to unload and reload equipment which shouldn't have been loaded in the first place as the project was not complete. 4. While Jim was driving one of the technicians to another location, the other took an hour lunch, which it does not appear to be noted on the invoice. (Additionally, due to improper planning, the technicians asked for water. Since our water had not been turned on yet, we provided them with 5 bottles of water over the period.) RESPONSE: Thank you for your feed back, as we try to address and resolve every issue that presents itself. As far as your 1st concern, spoke for itself. We took everyone off the clock that wasn't physically at your location after 12:50, reducing the price. As far as second concern, I informed Tom that we would using a riding mower eith bagger to vut and remove alot of the rebris around the creek bed, which by the way, it wotked great. It's really very hard to servey stable ground versus muddy ground, when the actusl muddy ground can appear to hold your weight, or be walked on. You just really don't know until you start driving on it. Most of tge ground held up. Later we just raked the debris up the grass, then mowed it up. Whether equipment is stuck or not, time is still billed, as it's time on the job. Yes, you are correct, we should have asked permission to drive the truck on the lawn, but I'm pretty sure there was no damage fone to the sprinkler heads, as sot under ground quite a few inches, but by all means, if there is an issue, please let us know. As far as mud slick in ditch, we fo apologize about that. Yes, there was acknowledgement to Tom snd an attempt yo remedy the situation with tge skid mark. I did talk to Tom about it, and he said not to worry about it. I did offer to fill the hole. The return time is billed from the time we stop, to the time we leave. Every landscape company bills out time that way. Heck, landscapers, Bobcat operators ever bill travel time to and fro at tune of $85 per hour. It took us 2.5 man hours to perform our return work, and we did not include travel time. As far as an hour lunch, he was breaking and bagging up sticks, and only waited 10 minutes by trailer when I pulled back up. Technician said he did not take an hour lunch, they are not suppose to. Look, we appreciate you letting the guys have some water, it was very kind of you to do that. It's kinda sad though that someone would have to complain about giving a worker water like giving someone water would be such an inconvenience. Heck, it wasn't such a big deal when were there. Tom wanted to give us water, and insisted that we have some bottled water. We do apprecite it though. You know what, I coukd care less if you put a shitty review on line, could care less. It will be rebutted, and thrown out. Why don't you take a look at our website reviews, better yet, why don't you take a look at our Chiefs Comendation from City of New Hope under Award on menu and then tell me how unGodly aweful we are, or how terrible we are. Ok, We saved a life! To conclude, we did nothing wrong, work was billed out appropriately, and work was done to your satisfaction, which Tom said it looked fantastic! Good day, God bless! read more

Extremely unreliable and overpriced service. I live in another state and was looking to do a fall lawn cleanup for my renters in Minneapolis. I called FJ and we discussed it over they phone. They asked how much I wanted to pay and since we have a very small yard I told them not more than $300. I made it very clear to the person on the phone that I did not want to pay more than $300 and to STOP the lawn care once they reached the amount of work they thought they could reasonably charge $300 for. He agreed and said no problem. Needless to say, I get a bill a few weeks later for $377. I'm not sure why they didn't communicate with me before they did the extra $77 worth of work to make sure I was ok with it. I wrote an email to explain the situation and he responded with a very defensive and not-apologetic-whatsoever email. Not sure how they will stay in business long with this type of customer service. I will never use FJ again, nor will I recommend them to anybody. read more

We were fairly frustrated with their process as we had an appointment with FJ Lawn care that was never attended by them, with no call that no one would be in attendance, they were extremely late to the second one. We were told that our clean up service would be done by the end of the day on a Friday it didn't happen that way. They sent us an email back that said we were first on their list for Monday morning. We called them at 4:30 because no one showed up yet and they went to the wrong address and cleaned a yard that wasn't on the schedule. By 5:30 they finally showed up spent an hour on the yard left and didn't come back on Tuesday until 11AM. Basically we had to beg them to do the work. We had further services planned with them but we cancelled all of them. I would NOT recommend them to anyone read more

Disorganized. Said I hadn't paid and no apology when I showed them the cancelled check. Never arrived for Fall cleanup. Snow removal at least 20 hours after snow stopped and then not a clean job. read more

I hired FJ Lawncare to do the initial mowing of the year in the spring. My initial interactions with them were good. When I received the bill I went online to pay it. The only payment method they have is PayPal (which I do not trust) or snail mail. I called and got an answering machine to try to pay over the phone. I emailed with my concerns and was told that they were currently searching for a vendor to use for credit card payments. From they way it sounded in the email I thought I could wait until they had it setup because it wouldn't be much longer. A couple of weeks later I get a long email about how I am dodging paying them and that they are going to put a lien on the house! Only a couple weeks had past since I had gotten the bill! They are completely unreasonable and extremely rude if this is how they treat their customers. I do not recommend them to anyone. read more