MRW Lawns, Inc.
- Thread starter DoWhat
- Start date
Silly me.
I did a search for MRW on the forums and found this.
http://forums.somd.com/home-garden/45205-lawns.html
I should of listened to the Lawn Sprinkler Tech back in 2005, when I still had a nice lawn. But I thought I could take care of it myself.
I did a search for MRW on the forums and found this.
http://forums.somd.com/home-garden/45205-lawns.html
I should of listened to the Lawn Sprinkler Tech back in 2005, when I still had a nice lawn. But I thought I could take care of it myself.
I am the guy that is always posting on this So. Md. Online with lawn information. I guess it is alright to ID myself as the owner of MRW Lawns since we sponsor this site. Go to my site at MRW Lawns - Home Page to learn more about us and email me your information through the contact us tab, or call the office and set an appointment with one of our consultants.
I just signed a contract on the 14th.
Rommey
Well-Known Member
I've used MRW for many years and they make my lawn look great...well except for those freaking bozos from Verizon that dug up my lawn and put some really ####ty grass seed down. I'll be pulling that crap out and have MRW come back out and fix those areas. They come out regularly and I almost never have weeds and the grass is always green...of course I do my part and water.
sparkyaclown
Active Member
Figured I would chime an opposing view. We used them for a couple of years and were very happy with the service until we actually ended up with a weed problem. They supposedly did free service calls for issues that crop up between visits so we figured no big deal. We called weekly for about 6 weeks to have them come out and take care of it, each time we were told someone would be out either in a few days or the following week. No one ever showed up, we were just constantly given excuses. When the weeds had finally almost completely taken over my yard, I gave up called and canceled the contract and took care of it myself. While it is a lot more work, at least if I have a weed problem I only have myself to blame.
Sparky,
Sorry for your bad experience. It is hard to comment because I know nothing about what happend. It certainly does not sound like MRW Lawns, Inc that you were dealing with. It is company policy that service calls be expedited within 48 hours for customers in good standing. Given the opportunity, I would do everything in my power that is reasonable to the situation that I could to satisfy you. If you would like more follow up, feel free to contact me at rickl@mrwlawns.com
Hey Rommey,
I have let my Verizongrass go and guess what; the rye grass is just about gone and filling in with halfway decent stuff. I'll bet after my early summer fertilizer application it will be gone. How about yours?
Rommey
Well-Known Member
Still looks like crap. Kind of like a lime green beacon...or should I say 3 beacons. As soon as it dries out a bit, I'll be out there pulling as much as I can. Fortunately it has pretty weak root system and comes out fairly easily. Just takes some time and effort.
Call me.
Yea, the areas seem kind of thin with the dead rye stalks sticking up. If you are going to dig it up now, be sure to sod instead of seed and water the crap out of it. Longwood Gardens usually carries tall fescue sod from MMF.
I am goin to give mine a few more weeks and water to see if the blue grass will fill in. I don't see anything else particularly alarming like quackgrass or orchard grass.
To respond to the original question, yes I have experience with them and I am posting it here in the hopes that others do not suffer the same fate I did with them.
My initial dealings with them were great. I got an estimate for $2500 to include round-up of the entire yard, compost over the entire yard, slice seeding and fertilization. It took a couple weeks for the lawn to die, which is normal, followed by the remainder of the service. The lawn came in nicely with only a couple spots that had to be re-touched to fill in a bit. This was in the fall of 2009 (late October). It grew enough to be mowed one time before the cold came and it went dormant for the winter.
Spring 2010 was a totally different experience. My lawn greened up nicely until the MRW technician performed the first service. My neighbor had his yard done by them at the same time in the fall and his services were done when mine were. Once the technician left the first time (presumably just fertilizer and pre-emergent was applied) we started noticing browning at the base of grass blades in the front and back yards, and I had two very large (6ftx6ft and 15ftx3ft) areas brown and die very rapidly. Those spots were right in the front yard and looked terrible from the street. And the weeds came on heavily throughout the yard.
So I called MRW and that's when the experience with their poor customer service and unwillingness to stand behind their work really showed. They came out to look at the yard and blamed the problems on everything except their own employee, whose poor work showed immediately because the lawn turned within a day of his servicing the lawn. Here's what I was told...
Some other lawn company must have inadvertently serviced your lawn so it got a double dose of everything. You, the customer, need to find out who they were and have them fix the problem.
Seriously?? A mystery lawn company serviced my yard and left no stake in the ground, no tag on the door, no signs of every being there, no overspray of chemicals (they use dry chemicals because of the size of the lawn)? Absolutely zero reason to believe anyone but MRW had serviced my lawn but that's what they blamed it on because "our guy does great work". That's all they had as an excuse...someone else must have done it. So they stood behind that argument but made it appear they were doing me a service by raking those dead areas and throwing down some seed. However, as lawn professionals they know well that pre-emergent works to prevent seed from germinating so they were just going through the motions to make it appear they cared.
When I still complained that the lawn looked embarrassing, and far worse than before they used round-up to start the lawn over, they informed me that, again, their technician is the best they have and he has always produced great results and the weeds are "normal" because they had to slice seed so existing weed seeds were able to grow. I get it that "some" weeds will grow but if the pre-emergent had been applied correctly they would be limited in growth to areas that may not have gotten enough pre-emergent applied. Not the case in my or my neighbor's yard. They were both full of weeds, much heavier than before they treated the lawns, and today both of those lawns are an absolute embarrassment, filled with crab grass, clover and several creeping weeds.
Both my neighbor and I terminated our relationships with MRW soon after the unprofessional and uncaring responses to our genuine, paid-for expectations. MRW's failure to stand behind the mess they created on both of our lawns is inexcusable. As a business I can understand if a single employee causes issues that the business must then remediate, but it is simply unreasonable to blame other companies for your own employee's failures without any proof of such an incident happening, and it is unethical to retain the money of those customers who pay for a service and level of quality they never receive. I spent $2500 to improve my lawn beyond the appearance I was able to bring it to on my own, but I have now had to slice seed the lawn myself this fall and I will invite MRW to come in the spring and see what true care of a lawn should look like. I am embarrassed for anyone to see my lawn, and my neighbor is as well, and all because we trusted the claims of MRW that they can make and support a beautiful, weed free (ask about their claims of 0.000% weeds!) lawn. My job was to water it properly, mow it and trim it correctly and pay them to provide exceptional lawn service. I held up my end of the deal and they completely failed on theirs. I understand issues do come up, but to not stand behind them and to basically blame the customer and other unknown lawn services is unethical, without merit and shows the true character of MRW lawns and its owners.
My initial dealings with them were great. I got an estimate for $2500 to include round-up of the entire yard, compost over the entire yard, slice seeding and fertilization. It took a couple weeks for the lawn to die, which is normal, followed by the remainder of the service. The lawn came in nicely with only a couple spots that had to be re-touched to fill in a bit. This was in the fall of 2009 (late October). It grew enough to be mowed one time before the cold came and it went dormant for the winter.
Spring 2010 was a totally different experience. My lawn greened up nicely until the MRW technician performed the first service. My neighbor had his yard done by them at the same time in the fall and his services were done when mine were. Once the technician left the first time (presumably just fertilizer and pre-emergent was applied) we started noticing browning at the base of grass blades in the front and back yards, and I had two very large (6ftx6ft and 15ftx3ft) areas brown and die very rapidly. Those spots were right in the front yard and looked terrible from the street. And the weeds came on heavily throughout the yard.
So I called MRW and that's when the experience with their poor customer service and unwillingness to stand behind their work really showed. They came out to look at the yard and blamed the problems on everything except their own employee, whose poor work showed immediately because the lawn turned within a day of his servicing the lawn. Here's what I was told...
Some other lawn company must have inadvertently serviced your lawn so it got a double dose of everything. You, the customer, need to find out who they were and have them fix the problem.
Seriously?? A mystery lawn company serviced my yard and left no stake in the ground, no tag on the door, no signs of every being there, no overspray of chemicals (they use dry chemicals because of the size of the lawn)? Absolutely zero reason to believe anyone but MRW had serviced my lawn but that's what they blamed it on because "our guy does great work". That's all they had as an excuse...someone else must have done it. So they stood behind that argument but made it appear they were doing me a service by raking those dead areas and throwing down some seed. However, as lawn professionals they know well that pre-emergent works to prevent seed from germinating so they were just going through the motions to make it appear they cared.
When I still complained that the lawn looked embarrassing, and far worse than before they used round-up to start the lawn over, they informed me that, again, their technician is the best they have and he has always produced great results and the weeds are "normal" because they had to slice seed so existing weed seeds were able to grow. I get it that "some" weeds will grow but if the pre-emergent had been applied correctly they would be limited in growth to areas that may not have gotten enough pre-emergent applied. Not the case in my or my neighbor's yard. They were both full of weeds, much heavier than before they treated the lawns, and today both of those lawns are an absolute embarrassment, filled with crab grass, clover and several creeping weeds.
Both my neighbor and I terminated our relationships with MRW soon after the unprofessional and uncaring responses to our genuine, paid-for expectations. MRW's failure to stand behind the mess they created on both of our lawns is inexcusable. As a business I can understand if a single employee causes issues that the business must then remediate, but it is simply unreasonable to blame other companies for your own employee's failures without any proof of such an incident happening, and it is unethical to retain the money of those customers who pay for a service and level of quality they never receive. I spent $2500 to improve my lawn beyond the appearance I was able to bring it to on my own, but I have now had to slice seed the lawn myself this fall and I will invite MRW to come in the spring and see what true care of a lawn should look like. I am embarrassed for anyone to see my lawn, and my neighbor is as well, and all because we trusted the claims of MRW that they can make and support a beautiful, weed free (ask about their claims of 0.000% weeds!) lawn. My job was to water it properly, mow it and trim it correctly and pay them to provide exceptional lawn service. I held up my end of the deal and they completely failed on theirs. I understand issues do come up, but to not stand behind them and to basically blame the customer and other unknown lawn services is unethical, without merit and shows the true character of MRW lawns and its owners.
MRW Lawns, Inc. has a long standing reputation of quality and customer service to the folks in Southern Maryland. If a problem occurs in any lawn, we have always tried to make the situation right. It has been our policy for 22 years that if we made a mistake, we would own up to it and take care of it to the best of our ability. It has also been our policy that if we were blamed for something that we obviously did not cause, we would not take the blame. It was obvious the problem in this individuals lawn was not caused by our application as he claimed. Our technician applied the same granular material to 15 or so other lawns, including the neighbors lawn with no ill effects. We had no answer as to what had happend, but we were not going to take the blame for something that obviously was not our fault. The evidence just did not point to a mistake by our technician. Our application was a granular and the damaged area seemed to be done by a liquid application. I am sure you will agree when you look at the attached picture. With close inspection there was no concentration of granular fertilizer in the area.
Nevertheless, we attempted to work out a solution with this gentleman, but he was not going to let it happen. My partner went and raked out and reseeded the area and offered him special discounts on seeding the lawn in the fall since we were getting so late in the spring for good results. Our relationship with him ended because he was unwilling to work with us, not the other way around. And, where he got the idea that we made claims of a 100% weed free lawn?!?! We are in business because weeds are a persistent problem. We do a pretty good job and use the best products on the market, but weeds will still occur which is why we try to address them as much as we possibly can. You can see some weeds in the picture, but the lawn was too young for broadleaf herbicide to be applied. The weeds would be taken care of as things warmed up and the new turf has a better root and less vulnerable to burning. But never have we or will we make claims of a 100% weed free lawn. Anyway, once again, I refuse to take the blame for how his lawn looks. How can it be my fault when I have not had the opportunity to treat the lawn since March?
So, that is my side. I will leave it to you, the ladies and gentlemen in the jury to decide. Now, after this; I need a beer
Attachments
That area in the photo clearly shows the dead spot, one of two like that, and we did realize it came from a spillage of your materials on the lawn that were attempted to be washed into the ditch by the technician using a garden hose at my home. I did not believe it was necessary to go that deep into the cause, but you obviously have no problem sidestepping ownership of a problem caused immediately following your employee's treatment of the lawn. We did initially think it was caused by a liquid maliciously, but when the entire lawn began to show similar signs of browning, but not to this heavy a degree, we looked more closely at the stress throughout the property on the lawn. The neighbor's yard, as far back as the rear of their yard, showed similar problems and is now as completely dead as most of my "professionally installed" lawn. No, they are not dormant. They are dead. That is a clear sign that not only was the lawn poorly done, but also must have been a far too heavy usage of an annual grass seed and insufficient amounts of perennial seed. True lawns do not die under the stress of heat - they go into a dormant dry state until conditions are sufficient to sustain growth. Parts of the yard have survived, but more than 60% died.MRW Lawns, Inc. has a long standing reputation of quality and customer service to the folks in Southern Maryland. If a problem occurs in any lawn, we have always tried to make the situation right. It has been our policy for 22 years that if we made a mistake, we would own up to it and take care of it to the best of our ability. It has also been our policy that if we were blamed for something that we obviously did not cause, we would not take the blame. It was obvious the problem in this individuals lawn was not caused by our application as he claimed. Our technician applied the same granular material to 15 or so other lawns, including the neighbors lawn with no ill effects. We had no answer as to what had happend, but we were not going to take the blame for something that obviously was not our fault. The evidence just did not point to a mistake by our technician. Our application was a granular and the damaged area seemed to be done by a liquid application. I am sure you will agree when you look at the attached picture. With close inspection there was no concentration of granular fertilizer in the area.
Nevertheless, we attempted to work out a solution with this gentleman, but he was not going to let it happen. My partner went and raked out and reseeded the area and offered him special discounts on seeding the lawn in the fall since we were getting so late in the spring for good results. Our relationship with him ended because he was unwilling to work with us, not the other way around. And, where he got the idea that we made claims of a 100% weed free lawn?!?! We are in business because weeds are a persistent problem. We do a pretty good job and use the best products on the market, but weeds will still occur which is why we try to address them as much as we possibly can. You can see some weeds in the picture, but the lawn was too young for broadleaf herbicide to be applied. The weeds would be taken care of as things warmed up and the new turf has a better root and less vulnerable to burning. But never have we or will we make claims of a 100% weed free lawn. Anyway, once again, I refuse to take the blame for how his lawn looks. How can it be my fault when I have not had the opportunity to treat the lawn since March?
So, that is my side. I will leave it to you, the ladies and gentlemen in the jury to decide. Now, after this; I need a beer
You are mistaken if you believe the neighbor's yard did not show similar signs and I encourage you to reach out to him to confirm my information to assure you this is factual. His lawn is now almost entirely clover, which does not exist in other lawns around his home. So where did that clover come from? Again, poor seed quality from MRW. And why did it grow? Poor pre-emergent application by MRW. The weeds in that photo of my yard clearly show heavy weed growth in a brand new lawn. All of the light green and the brown are weeds, which cover most all of the ditch. It is unfortunate you could not catch more of the lawn to better show how heavy the weed growth was so early in the yard's growth (after you killed all grass and weed previously on the lawn).
I am pleased you chose to respond and once again demonstrate a complete unwillingness to both accept any responsibility for unacceptable work, but to also deny any accountability or concern for customer satisfaction. This was my experience with Wayne and other employees at MRW from the very beginning of signs of stress on our yard. This should help others to see both the good and bad of your lawn service.
And in response to the "offer" to give me a cut rate on doing the lawn over (again!), that was simply unreasonable. Nobody else never put a single product on the lawn and I paid MRW as the sole provider for my lawn maintenance (fertilizer, herbicide, etc). But when that caused a problem you simply wanted me to pay you again (after the first $2500 I paid you I got a "generous" offer of taking $1000 off of the price to do it again). So I had a consideration to make. Pay you another $1500 when you already proved you couldn't do the job right the first time...so what would make me trust the second time you could get it right? Pay again for what was never right? I work far too hard for money to throw more and more money at a problem I was not responsible for and did not cause. Your guy did it...own up and be accountable. That's how businesses work and that's why you carry insurance against damages your employees may cause. If employees were perfect you would need no insurance. I do not blame MRW just to blame them. I blame MRW because you failed 2 different customers and your service was terrible and your guarantee of a beautiful lawn meant absolutely nothing. I'm out $2500 and not one more customer deserves to receive from your company the accusatory treatment, just like in your post above, or the poor service I received. They should get what they pay for, nothing more and nothing less.
That's my hope as well DoWhat and it's the only reason I posted my experience. If it helps anyone at all then I feel it was worth the time invested to share.
I would recommend you video record the lawn as it comes in and along the way through its first season of growth. If you find discoloration, especially near the base of the blades of grass, record your findings. They obviously will take photos as well so don't feel bad doing so yourself. Note problems, particularly in the first few days following any lawn treatments, and be sure to contact them to come out and see what you see for themselves. As you can see by the previous posts there are 2 sides to everything, but your side is the one that you pay for. They'll stand behind an employee before standing behind their guarantee, but by being proactive and informing them you know about issues with other homeowners' lawns they have serviced you can possibly head off issues before they happen. They'll pay better attention to doing it right if they know you plan to stay on top of it and ask for input from others who have used their service.
Best of luck and don't worry. Do your part to hold them accountable for what you pay them for and things should go much better than they did for me and for my neighbor. Hopefully you will be one of those who receives a great lawn you can brag about to your friends and neighbors.
Guess I need to take this comment by comment and I hope this is the end of it.
1.) This is an extreme burn of the lawn and there would be much evidence of the spill had it occurred. My partner examined your lawn and found no evidence of fertilizer spill in the burned area. If my tech was able to wash it away as you said, there would still be evidence of the spill, and this is not normal procedure anyway. My technicians are taught to own up to their mistakes and a spill of this magnitude would have been well documented. If this was our fault, we would admit it. You don't want to believe my partner.
2.) We do not use annual rye in our seed. Our blend is a blend of turftype tall fescue and Kentucky bluegrass. You are quite mistaken that a new perennial lawn doesn't die because of heat and drought. They certainly will if they are not watered and mown properly and have poor soil conditions. A lawn takes a few years to become fully established. In that time, you have to be willing to care for it with proper water, mowing, fertilizer and reseeding. There are a lot of examples of that especially this year. Aeration and seeding is usually recommended after a tough summer, especially one like we just had. We leave our customers instructions how to care for the lawn.
3.) Once again, you want to blame us for your weed problems, yet I have not been able to treat either yours or you neighbors lawn all summer. Certainly your lawns have gone into stress from the tough summer and the turf can not compete and choke out the weeds. Clover (all varieties) is everywhere and very common. Weed seeds can remain in the soil for a very long time and germinate under the right conditions. I assure you that our seed is a quality blend of only perennial Turf Type Tall fescue and Kentucky bluegrass. I can show you the tag of the seed that we use. I look at the National Turf Evaluation Program and I choose what I think is the best ones from my suppliers. They are always in the top 50 on the UMD recommended list. On occaision we will use John Deere Transition Blend which is still a weed-free blend of their best tall fescue varieties.
4.) Your lawn had some winter annual weeds that came into the lawn after the renovation. This is also typical of a new lawn. However, you have to be patient before you spray a new lawn with a phenoxy type herbicide for broadleaf weeds. The lawn needs to have well established secondary roots and that usually happens in April. Drought hit us quite early this year, and I suspect what you were experiencing was drought stress in the lawn. I know that is hard to believe with all the snow we had, but it is true. We had some calls the 1st of April for brown lawns and it was drought stress. Once people got the message and started watering things were ok
5.) I feel your pain. I know that $2500 is a lot of money to spend for something you do not feel you got your money's worth. What you need to realize is that it is time to stop grasping at straws and blaming us for your failure and accept the fact that the lawn is just going to take time, money, and effort to become established into a good quality perennial lawn. Wayne and Bobby both did their best to work things out with you but you just insisted on blaming us and refused to work with us. Your problem could have been negotiated to a better end for you. The sooner you admit to YOUR failure, the sooner you will be able to get what you want and fix your problem.
We are certainly licensed and bonded. My technicians are not perfect and they make a few mistakes. We do not create an air where they are afraid to admit them. They are encouraged to admit and fix them if they can or ask for help. That is the only way they will learn from them and avoid them in the future. And, as I said earlier, as a company, we will admit and will bend over backwards to fix our mistakes and make it up to the customer if we make them. But, we won't admit to anything that is not our fault.
In closing, I am done on this thread and do not feel I need defend the actions of my partner, my manager, my technicians or my company any further. What I would encourage you to do is to think about what you post before posting, and ensure that it is in fact factual and not the fiction you describe.
Richard L. LaNore
MRW Lawns, Inc.
Technical Director
DW-You know that you have nothing to worry about