I have had waldrons lawn service for years and it has become so bad that I am forced to write this review.
It was a family run business for years, and when the other brother was involved it was really great. It is not rocket science taking care of a lawn but my lawn looked great all the time and I could count on them and was happy.
Then, shortly after one brother retired and only dan Waldron was left with the business, I asked them for a bid to put in some lawn. They sent jose out and he spent hours measuring the space and coming up with a drawing and a price. I accepted and, after 2 days of work (and a beautiful lawn) I got a bill for double the bid! $6000 when I had it in writing from him it would be $3000 - including a detailed map with correct measurements.
When I pointed this out dan apologized saying that jose didn't understand our culture and how you can't say one thing and do another. Jose had provided his calculations on graph paper with the measurements and when I showed dan that he had calculated correctly and so the $3k bid should stand Dan agreed to honor the written bid of 3k.
However, months later I was still getting statements showing I owed the rest of his inflated billing. I ignored it thinking they would get to correcting it but then Dan called me trying to renegotiate the total even though he had verbally told me it was paid in full at the original price of $3k.
I ended up getting suckered into giving him more and more money so that in the end I paid close to the doubled price. My lawn was still in good shape so I was over looking a lot to have the lawn service I had counted on from his brother.
However, then my lawn care started to go downhill. When I first called dan about it he actually told me he had 900 accounts - as if that was an explanation as to why my lawn was not looking as good as it used to.
Then his service began blowing debris into flower and vegetable beds - instead of disposing it in one of my green bins - like they told us they had to do because the disposal fees were escalating - they sent out a communication that if they couldn't use our bins for disposal they would have to charge more for the disposing of the clippings. Yet on my property they not once put it in the bin - instead they blew it all over the property - creating more work for us each time we came.
Each time I had to call dan because of the decline in standard of service he was clearly put out. The "we have over 900 clients" line was repeated. Then "I live in grass Valley, I don't want to have to come down to Sonoma, call jose" was typical.
I must reiterate that I was only calling about my lawn (which was getting worse and worse) and I didn't think it was that complicated - how hard could it be? My lawn looked great for years when his brother was involved!
Finally, when I sent him photos tonight of how bad my lawn had become - he simply replied not to text after hours! He followed up with a call to tell me to find another service instead of responding to photos - - which can not lie!
What makes matters worse is that I had met jose 10 days ago on site when the lawn was in very bad shape and he promised to fix it. Yet 10 days later it is worse and, rather than be accountable, dan quit!
He also charged me double the agreed rate about two weeks ago even though they couldn't be bothered to actually come by and do anything!
This is the first bad review I have ever written! I hope this helps anyone considering using Waldron so that no one else has to suffer through the same things I did over a simple lawn!
I am also filed complaints with the California license board and a number of other consumer protection agencies as a result of dan waldrons lack of responsibility, communication and general unprofessionalism. He has succeeded only in tarnishing his family's formerly good name.
Jh read more
