My lawn was in decent shape, so last year, when I was offered a good price for lawn care, I decided to go for it. What could possibly go wrong? For three months, they sprayed my lawn, and the grass was green, leaving everyone happy. However, one day the technician used a regular hose for spraying, followed by a backpack sprayer. After he sprayed, the grass turned brown, then black, and eventually became dirt.
I filed a complaint, and the local office supervisor called me. I quote him: “Mr. A, all of this was weeds.” I responded, asking, “So, you were spraying the weeds for three months, and now they are dead? Why did I pay for your services if your team sold me this package?”
Then, the regional manager visited and agreed that something went wrong. He informed me that I would have to wait until March for the grass to regrow, even though it was only September at the time. After that, he disappeared, and I complained to TrueGreen again. Now, they say the regional manager will call me to work out an “agreeable solution."
by Expert-Jeweler1699
42 Comments
True green sucks. I had them for a short while. I’m glad I cancelled.
Case and point- never use tru green 😂
An agreeable solution would be for you to get all of your money back and kick them to the curb. No other resolution will be a good one.
You obviously have a lawn salad. It appears that some sort of broadleaf weed died after application of a herbicide.
The thing is that now this needs re-soding. If they tell some BS to go 50-50, I am gonna go crazy.
Deet does this to grass. Weird.
Definitely a disaster! What is the grass variety?
Started using true green 4 months ago. My lawn still has weeds and my st Augustine grass is dying in a lot of places. I would be at work and get a txt saying they arrived at my home. 45 seconds later I would get a txt saying your lawn care is complete and they would be gone. Kid you not. Not sure you can even walk around my property in that little of time. I’m looking for a good local company with a good reputation.
you have a ton of nut grass weed. you should thank them
Imagine that, I had three plugs of St. Augustine from Home Depot, and the regional manager was saying that is something wild broadleaf and not St. Augustine…..
I worked for tru green. And honestly that company is a revolving door. I had no training once so ever. They did the test for me. Stuck me in a truck the next day and said go spray lawns.
Honestly my biggest fear was actually talking to a client because “I’m a professional like the commercials say.”
It was hell. I hated all 6 months of it.
One day they had me spraying in winds over 15 mph and even in the rain. If I didn’t do it is no overtime.
So I did it .. then customers complained saying it washed away. This going back and killing my bonus
There were some great techs at my location that knew their stuff inside and out. No lie. But the volume of clients vs techs was nuts. Literally doing 45 lawns a day.
They gave me a tablet. On the tablet it says to spend no more than 12 min on that property.
Depending on when you started up and the weather there you have a ton of crab grass i agree that true green isn’t a good company 1st thing is you need to get your pre emergent down early spring or you will see weeds all the time and 3 months isn’t reasonable for results you need a full year of service from any company it’s going to get alot worse before it gets better I work for a well known local company in the mid south patients is the key to this and make sure you water 1 to 2 days after each application trust the process but crab grass is a tough kill so make sure there doing there follow ups
Get a real professional next time.
Oh sorry hard to tell from the picture well st Augustin is really finicky, we don’t even treat it with the company I’m with because of issues like this. Thoses spots most likely won’t come back
You got lucky. I had TruGreen turn my back yard wall to wall brown. Nothing survived. I walked out to the guy skipping the broadcast spreader so extra nitrogen would go down. I said to stop, and it was dead in days.
I took it as an opportunity to put in some drainage, level the yard perfectly, and then put down all new sod. I refused to pay for my last service, and they gave me the run around and sent me to collections. I emailed them pictures, receipts for the sod, and contact info of my lawyer. They refunded me a month, and canceled out my last bill.
They still leave their shitty fliers on my door to this day.
Sorry this happened to you, but this is what you get for being equal parts cheap and uninformed. TruGreen is awful. Next time, just light a $100 bill on fire and punch yourself in the nuts: you’ll come out ahead.
Wow, I sure am surprised true green caused you some problems.
Looks like he killed a huge patch of nut/crab grass. Shouldn’t you be happy?
I mean is it the weeds between the Augustine dying?
Does water happen to pool around that part of your yard too? Most likely they didn’t recognize the St. Augustine and over stressed it before the cold months resulting in some weeds dying and weaker plugs dying off or browning out with it.
You definitely have a mixture of grass types currently. But ideally you dont do mass herbicide treatments right before the lawn shuts down growing for the season. You want the lawn to be growing and thriving to be able to withstand the herbicide treatments. The TG applicator most likely mixed the wrong ratio of chem in the backpack sprayer.
The St Aug grass wont recover until soil temps are consistently 70+ and getting 12 hours of sunlight per day. Do not put any more post emergent herbicides on the lawn until the lawn has recovered. So like not until Summer.
TG should have presented a plan of applications and not started post emergent treatments until April.
Some techs are great and then some are lazy sob. I caught one doing my 8000 sq ft lot in 2 mins. Obviously skipping whole sections. He didn’t see (or care) that I have cameras all over my property.
I used to work for trugreen.. when this would happen the manager would always offer to put new sod down. This is their mistake 100%. Trugreen is the worst.
If you compare the 1st and 2nd photos you can see a lot of your weeds before the spray did anything…
Probably shouldn’t have done it unless the plan was to grow new grass shortly after the weeds died but yeah those are various weeds, nut grass. Can even see actual grass doing fine in photo 3.
I worked for Trugreen so I’m willing to say he spot sprayed crabgrass at least that’s kinda what it looks like though it’s hard to tell in the picture, come warmer weather when growing season kicks off a good dose of fertilizer and crab grass preventative that they put down will slowly fix your problem. Now if you want fast results you can hit it with a ton of nitrogen but I wouldn’t recommend mixing with their treats, also you will have grass thicker than the jungle and cutting becomes very difficult.
Any grass is better than no grass, i assume
It looks like St Augustine pull some up and take a picture.
Perhaps, thank him? lol
What I did before? I purchased the house. And after 3 months I got them. I see a lot of people saying that were weeds there, but the zoomed picture that shows the St Augustine start turning color, it’s not there anymore, it died. Even some plugs that I had died. So what everyone says…….
A new lawn is the only agreeable solution
For the people that saying that all these were weeds, even some St Augustine plugs that I planted before hiring them died….
I don’t have anything nice to say when ppl ask questions about St. Aug in the middle of winter. Leave it be.
Same thing…thought i would take a season off from weed control and just mow. They wrecked my lawn by aerating my lawn after heavy rain. I filled and seeded. Then I caught them on my back door camera only treating a quarter of the back yard with the truck hose atrachment. They offered me one extra treatment. I had the worst weed problem i had ever had that next spring. Company is a scam.
Fire them. Throw down a ton of nitrogen and organics. Get more sod plugs. Established grass will spread more than you expect if it’s happy. It’s going to be a long fight but it was always going to be. Also mow at 3 inches plus. Let them runners go.
Looks like you have a great opportunity to join r/nolawns. fresh start and ef lawns.
Just embrace the random ground cover, it is drought resistant, never needs fertilizer or pesticides and provides pollen for bees… grass is overrated and we waste a tremendous amount of resources trying to make stuff grow (grass) that keeps trying it’s best to die
Hired Tru Brown by mistake
The grass wasnt green – the weeds were green lol
You got hooked up. The weed killer is working
Time to get some top soil and high quality seed
A lot of your yard was crabgrass my friend. You should tip the guy for doing a good job.
It depends on what they were treating. I work in pest control and we have a turf division. He’s a friend of mine and treated nutsedge and when it died off and it looks like shit. Not his fault just what happens when you kill weeds. When I cut my grass and it was even with the weeds it looked fine. It really depends on what they used and what they were trying to kill.