As soon as I read "third party lawn services" I knew this was going to be Lawnstarter. I used them last year and part of this year, and things go so bad that dropping $1600 on a robotic mower was a better option than dealing them anymore.
Last year was fine enough, one incident with their "long grass fee" that was, honestly, bunk, because they looked at one small patch of grass and said obviously my whole lawn was more than 6". Ended up dropping them for someone local and goddess above do I wish I'd stuck with that.
This year, though... switched to weekly service to avoid that ever happening again. All was well and good for a little while, until one of their third party teams had an equipment malfunction and couldn't be here. Alright, fine, whatever.
Except there was one problem: they couldn't get someone out for nearly 2 additional weeks -- given how fast the grass grows in my yard, this would absolutely have put me into the long grass territory, but you would think that given that it was through absolutely no fault of my own that it would be easy to get them to waive the long grass fee, right? No. Every single response was some AI-generated junk about how they would "assess it when the time comes".
But it gets SO much worse. After all that mess, husband and I decided to cancel with Lawnstarter and just buy a robotic mower, because it'll pay for itself by the end of next year, roughly.
It's on order, and in the meantime, Lawnstarter says we "can't" cancel the scheduled service -- you know, the one that is two weeks late. I tell them I do not want to deal with them anymore. The crew comes out anyway, against my wishes, and I get a message that they'll need a multiple of the base cost to trim everything properly. That's right -- they trespassed on my property after I said no, and tried to tell me I had to pay several times more than the agreed upon amount for them to trim things up before they can even start mowing the lawn. Again -- it only needed trimming because of the delay.
I tell them no, we're handling it ourselves now. Lawnstarter still tries to charge us for the service that was not rendered, that I said I did not want.
But wait! There's even more. After I denied them, the third party crew called town code enforcement to alert them to the state of my yard, as well as some junk the previous owners had left behind the shed. The same junk Lawnstarter, including this very same crew, had been absolutely fine with all last year. I ended up needing that stuff hauled off, and the lawn cut one last time for the robotic mower, and thankfully I was able to get a local crew in about a day to handle it. It was not cheap, though, and the fact I only had to deal with that because the lawn company was butthurt over not getting paid to cover their lack of care absolutely infuriates me still.
tl;dr: Lawnstarter screwed me over by cancelling, could not give me assurances I wouldn't have to pay more for their issues, and then called the town on me for things they were fine with when I was giving them money. Avoid them. Find someone local, or buy a robotic mower.
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