UPDATE:
Received a phone call today from Steve Stronge who is for sure way better customer manager than I dealt with before at Weed Man. I am not sure if he is an owner as well. He explained that guarantee part, which is from what I gathered: if you see weeds call them and they will do as many applications as needed to get rid of them. Since I been away for the summer and my friend was staying at the house – I didn’t call. They also left recommendation for more watering on Aug 11th which I am not sure if my friend followed.
To be honest I appreciate the phone call even though it happened at 8am. A bit late though as I did post my reviews and I can’t take them back now, except writing this update. I still out of $170 for zero visible results as well.
Morale:
- Bring the great customer service in the beginning not at the end
- If you guarantee something, make sure you explain the guarantee in full. Including what is expected from the customer.
- Make sure all of the people who deal with the customer say the exact the same thing. Don’t spend 10s of thousands of dollars on your marketing if your first line employee talks down to a customer. Waste of money, because customer will only care about that interaction with the company.
- If you as a customer have problems with a service call immediately don’t wait -my fault.
The rest is the original story of what happened.
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It is been forever since I’ve seen such a bad service, that brought me back to my Consumer S.O.S. posts. If you don’t have time to read the whole post the gist of it is:
Weedman Scarborough brings you 0 results, bad customer service and pushy sales people. I have audio recordings , documents and pictures in this post to prove it.
Story:
Phase 1 – scam sales pitch
In the beginning of the summer I got a knock on the door from Weed Man Scarborough sales person who told me that they have innovative solution that even without chemicals will get rid of 80% of my weeds in the first application. The program included 8 applications and costs around $250 (I should have know it is too cheap to be true)- so I signed. After 8 applications I only had more weeds. See the picture:
Phase 2 – Bad Customer Service
After they completed their “weed control” service and seeing no results except their invoices at my door – I called them and spoke with a “customer care.” They told me they will send a guy to check it out. That was already October 10th (after I spent the whole summer with weeds) when their “professional” came over. You can see his note: adjust the pricing structure -more extensive weed control needed.
So pretty much the whole summer they didn’t see it? Or What?
After the recommendation, they came by the end of October and applied more “extensive weed control” nothing happened. At this point my neighbors who were annoyed with me, just pulled out weeds by themselves.
So I called “customer service” again and was told that 80% is a guarantee and they are the only company that can promise it. All I need to do is send my picture for the manager to see. Here is audio recording of my conversation Weed Man Scarborough. Just listen to the last minute of it, as the rep clearly states it is a guarantee.
Phase 3 even worse customer service
While doing all of that, I still was getting calls on Saturday from their Account Receivables and being harassed to pay. At the same time I was getting a call from their sales department asking me to sign for next year. Total disconnect between all of the departments - I guess words like CRM are unknown to Weed Man Scarborough.
Finally I got a phone call from “customer relationship manager” who explained to me that I can’t expect to see “instant results” and she is sorry I was guaranteed something. Seriously, that is all you have to say? You are sorry your sales reps are walking around and lying to people? You need to do better than that! She give me $40 discount and waived late payment fees.
I paid, because I just don’t have time to deal with it anymore, but I feel it is my responsibility to make sure that nobody I come into contact uses those scammers anymore. I was a big naive, I should have just typed into Google Weedman reviews and saw that you literary can’t find one positive review about this company.
Being an owner of online marketing company naturally I added to those negative reviews today – what a stupid move their part. Those guys need serious help with their marketing.
Let’s recap:
- Pushy sales people
- False advertising
- Lack of CRM
- 0 Results
- No positive reviews
