They're just not good. Maybe I'm biased, having done my own yard for so many years, but for paying someone to do it, I expected more. After 1 year of service, I am going back to doing it myself.
I decided to go forward with Four-D because they offered the best price for weekly service. They did a few other houses in my neighborhood, and the work seemed good enough on everyone else's lawn. However, I should have known what to expect starting with the spring clean-up. They did a very poor job with the spring clean-up. The leaves were moved, but branches and sticks remained scattered everywhere along the yard. The edges of the lawn were not touched up with any sort of weed whacking, so long grass/weeds stuck up far above the rest of the lawn on the edge of the property. I called to complain and they sent the crew back to do a better job, but I still had to go out myself and pick up the sticks (I filled up more than 3 leaf bags worth of sticks, so it wasn't me being overly critical). Additionally, they left a very large rut in my lawn from the tires of the stand-on mower they used.
But, my biggest gripe was the nearly weekly phone calls I had to make to complain about the work they did. Almost every week, they would leave a gate open when they were done. I have a dog, so that's kind of a big deal. They would routinely drive over sprinkler heads. When I told the office that they would need to be more careful, they told me 'the sprinkler heads must not be installed correctly' (they were for certain parts of the lawn, and they stuck up over a foot above the lawn so they weren't 'hidden' or hard to see). And when the gates weren't left open, they were damaged. Although I have no proof, since I didn't see it happen myself, I am certain that they were just hitting the gate hard with the mowers to force it open, rather than taking the 2 seconds to open the gates by hand. At least 6 times this summer, I had to take the gate apart, re-align the parts, and put it back together because they were damaged. No amount of phone calls would fix this.
All this is on top of the lack-luster service the provided. There were weeks when I would find large portions of my yard that were just 'missed' by the mower, and I would touch it up myself. There is 1 section of my yard that is along the street, that wasn't touched a single time all year. I would call and tell them that it needs to be mowed/whacked, or whatever, but they would never do it. So, the part of my property that is visible to everyone else would sometimes have 3ft high weeds growing.
Some weeks, I found myself spending a good chunk of time just touching up what I had paid for. The whole reason I went with them this year, was because I just didn't have the time to do it myself. My yard is in much worse shape than it was last year, or even in the beginning of the season. I am looking forward to next year, when I'm responsible for it myself.
Finally, there were some weeks where the weather wouldn't permit them to get to my yard. That's understandable. I'd rather skip a week, than have them mow my wet grass, and possibly cause some damage. But that didn't stop them from making sure they still did the service, so they could charge me. On more than 1 occasion, they wouldn't get to my yard until Monday or Tuesday (the normal day was Friday), but they'd still come the following Friday. My yard doesn't need to be mowed on Tuesday and Friday of that same week!
For the company's part, they were always apologetic and promised to be more careful when I had them on the phone, but nothing ever improved. I just felt that the reason for getting someone else to do it was so that I wouldn't be spending 3 hours of my own time a week doing it. But, like I said, I was still out there touching something up, or fixing the damage they did on an almost weekly basis. read more