TruGreen
reviews and complaints

I have used them for the past few years and my lawn has a lot of weeds. I see them come up and put their yellow signs up, but the following week I still have weeds. I call them and I am told they will send someone out to look at it. When you call them back nobody knows who came out. They straight out lie. After more phone calls they promise to send someone out and you never get to see anybody. They come out and service you again and my lawns has 30% more weeds. They do not care about making you happy. They just want their money and they do not give you service.

I paid them twice in May due to their online payment system. Unable to reach them by phone for days. They put you on hold for 15 or 20 minutes then disconnect. They have two 800 numbers on website, one for.customers, the other for new service, which they answer immediately but cannot transfer you to customer service or to a local office. No email contact is given on website! I finally found a local phone number, cancelled my service and requested refund for overpayment. They said I would receive a check in about 7 days. Have never received. I called them back every week and was.told check was in the mail. Today, July 5th they tell me accounting hasn't issued check yet but promised to mail it THIS week. Nothing but a company of liars. Would not recommend to anyone!

Scam. I paid up front for 6 months of lawn service with a free shrub service included if I paid in full. My credit card was charged the full amount including the shrub service. They were to knock on the door. It did not happen. They have had my money for over a month and I cannot get it back. Did they do my yard? I don't know. All they did was leave me papers.
Don't do business with this company. It's a scam.

The primary reason I started with Trugreen was to rid my lawn of weeds and have thick healthy grass. The specialist left notes in my door saying he sprayed weeds one time and that the crab grass would shortly die out...the rest of the applications he fertilized. I steadily watched my weeds grow larger throughout the year and crab grass never die.

THEN...I had some "spreader" type weed start in the front of my house in the grass...TruGreen people never took care of it so it spread onto some of my landscaping, at which time they called me and said that they could kill what was on my landscaping for an additional 65$ for landscaping treatment...even though it started in the grass that you were supposed to be treating for weeds in the first place!

So I call to complain again, and explain about all the weeds. The TruGreen employee says he wants to come get a better look so that he can understand what I am talking about. I told him to come buy sometime during the week after 4 p.m. and he says OK he will be there...Three days later I get a message on my phone saying that he doesn't think he can help me with my weed issue and he won't be stopping out...? Gee, thanks for not telling me that TruGreen cannot in fact, do lawn care. So I called back and cancelled all service with TruGreen.

For the money I spent I feel pretty ripped off. I will not recommend TruGreen to anyone in fact I would advise against it. If you search TruGreen in any search engine you will find out that there are tons of customers that are extremely unhappy with their service. To make things worse there sales people still call me regularly to try and sell me service. It drives me crazy, why wouldn't a manager stop by...see why I am so unhappy...fix it? Instead of letting me remain pissed off and telling the whole world (potential customers) that there company really, really, sucks.

It's too bad they just don't get it. Buyer beware.

This company NOT only lies to the customers, but they also lie TO and ABOUT their employees to cover their own illegal actions towards both the consumer and the employee. I used to work there, and they treat everyone like they're slaves! If you want to keep your sanity by all means STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY FOR EMPLOYMENT OR SERVICES. They're surely not thinking about you, while they're loading their pockets. In fact, you the consumer or employee are on the very last portion of their priorities.

April 5 2012

In March 2012 I called TruGreen Chemlawn and spoke to a customer service representative regarding non-contractual service they applied and automatically deducted from my bank. I was scammed in a similar fashion last year and ended up paying for the entire year. The had my account number and the sky was the limit. This time it was the final straw. I filed a complaint with the BBB and was called by the local manager who apologized and said that my $37 would be refunded to me. It's been 2 months and I'm still waiting. However, I have received 2 calls back since then. My son told me that they called and said that they had a verbal contract with me. I received another call last night with no message. I called the number on my caller id and of course it was their countrywide number and they couldn't tell me who had called and from where. I left my name and number and am still waiting for a call back from my “local office” whose number isn't available to me. I am a disabled widow living on a limited income and I will take this to the Supreme Court if I must and then it will be $37.00 plus legal costs.

I can say that TruGreen did help my lawn at one point but within 3-4 months of treatment the grass eventually looked like a patches of light and dark green grass. Unfortunately I allowed the salesman to convince me to use a grass blend. (wrong decision) When I complained about the way the grass looked I was told that they no longer used grass blend and that the only way to possibly fix the problem would be to aerate and seed for the next 2 years.I eventually cancelled their service but was offered a percentage off to fix the problem that I think occurred after the seeding.I must say that the workers were helpful in explaining what they were doing when applying any lawn application. Eventually I cancelled the service because the grass did not seem to improve after further treatment. Please do your research.

I have worked for TruGreen off and on for roughly 2 years. I want to apologize to everyone who have had a bad experience. There are a select few employees at TruGreen that honestly do care for the customers. I am one of them. I am about to put in my resignation due to the fact that my upper management will not allow me to provide the care that my customers need. I am a salesperson, and have treated the lawns as well. In the past (selling) we were given a set of a few neighborhoods to knock doors and market etc. Now upper management is providing us with specific neighborhoods that include roughly 80 homes or less to knock. We arrive at our neighborhood at approx 1200 hrs and leave the neighborhood between 8 and 8:30. It takes the average rep approx 2 hrs to knock and market an 80 house neighborhood. Do the math. They make us re knock every single house over and over again until it is time for us to come in. Their excuse for this stradegy is "properly penetrating a neighborhood". I think it is pure HARRASSMENT! When we are inside calling cancelled customers, we are given 50 sheets of calling material. If no one answers the sales call, it will take roughly 1 hour to call through it. We are to keep calling and recycling through the material over and over again until we get a "YES" or a "F*** YOU!" I am sorry to all the customers and potential customers that I have offended in the past, I was just following orders. They make it almost impossible for me to stick to my promises. The truth is, they make us lie to customers. I refuse to lie to my customers about anything! It is wrong and I have more integrity than that. If your caught being "honest" to a customer, you will get a toungue lashing, or a write up, or worse.

Just FYI, if anyone who reads this is a TruGreen customer, or a potential customer beware. Salesman will confuse you, and feed you lies to purchase the product. Do the products work? Absolutley! Some of the best lawns I have ever seen have been TruGreen lawns. If you ever try to cancel, good luck. Even after you cancel your service, they will still treat your lawn one last time and bill you. If you are angry and decide not to pay it, they will send you to fake collections, and call you about 100 times in the first week. Then several months later, you will be bombarded with harrassing sales calls begging you back. There are no contracts in this business, in Georgia anyway. If you dont pay your bill, dont worry it will not affect your credit due to the fact that we dont have your social security number, you will just be hounded for the money for years to come. So if you cancel your service, change your #, trust me.

All in all, TruGreen does not care about your satisfaction, only the green in your wallet. Keep in mind when shopping for this kind of product, there might be a better provider for you to start a relationship with. I am leaving TruGreen this week, and I will never work for a ServiceMaster company as long as I live.

Now, on to the lawn care side. I will tell you this, your yard is an eco system, results may vary. The problem is not that the product does not work. It is the applicator. The so called lawn specialists are not really specialists at all. with the exception of few. They are given an extremely high goal to hit every day, or they will be punished to work on saturday, or their paycheck will be affected. They cannot spend the time necessary to treat your yard properly. They just hope that over time your yard will improve, then it looks like the job was done right. When a customer signs up for a full program of treatments, they are told that "TruGreen offers a 100% guarantee, and we will visit your lawn as often as necessary to make any adjustments to your yard". This is true to an extent, but a hassel. For example, one of my customers would call for a service call. I would say no problem, we will be out within 48 hours to re treat every blade of grass you have for free. I go to turn in the service call and some make it and some dont. If you have been treated, and you dont see results within14 days, you will not get a service call. On the 15 day you can, if you are lucky. If your service call is within a week of your next scheduled service, you will not get a service call. Although, most of the lawns that my territory maintains do look good, but upper managment will not help you if your yard looks like crap. Again I apologize for this. Do your RESEARCH!

I hope I have helped a few people save some money, I feel better now that I got this out there. BUYER, and SEEKING EMPLOYMENT beware.

I had originally signed up for TrueGreen service because I honestly do not have time to cut my lawn during the summer. It is the busy season for my line of work. After a few months of service I decide that I will not sign up for next year but would finish this year out.

The prices were too high and the results were less than expected. I get better service from my neighbor who for a small price will trim my lawn. Everything was fine until I received a bill the following summer!

I never signed up for the next year! I never even noticed the trim! Why would I pay for a service I never requested? I called to figure out this unwanted charge. Customer Service told me that the service continues every year until cancelled by customer! They are allowed to charge you even though you never asked them to trim your lawn!

What a complete rip off! This should be an illegal practice! I have not paid the bill because I did not ask them to perform it! They are now threatening me until I pay. Is there anyway I can fight this? TrueGreen is only there for your green wallet!

I recieved a letter from this company inquiring as to why I canceled my lawn service. I responded with a very detailed letter and was not even given the courtesy of a response. I am hoping that if I put forth the effort to put this on the internet for others to see that maybe someone will decide it is worth their time and effort to respond. One day a salesman John Hutton came to my door from your company asking to treat my trees and shrubs.I have a lot of htem, so we walked out into hte yard and looked at all of htem, and he said he could treat them for $39. That was a great price so I signed up for it and he said he would send someone out hte next week to do the job. All went accordingly and a guy shows up at my door and says he is there to do the job, but that he would not do all the trees for that 39 dollars. I said that was the salesman's price not mine. So i called the salesman who had assured me that he would always be there to help me and I could have his cell number to call anytime. I told john what was going on and he siad he would talk to his supervisor and get back to me. In the mean time I asked hte service tech if he could at least treat my two big trees that were not looking too healthy. He did and left a bill for the 39 dollars. I never heard from John again and called the local office to inquire as to the status a couple of weeks later. The lady said she would look into it and give me a call. She never did as well so some time later I called again and hte lady said she woudl send someone out on Monday to finish the job. No one ever came. I called the national number in TN and the lady was very sympathetic and said she would contact hte local office again sometime later, because now it is about the principle of the thing and happened to get a guy named Jesse, who listened to my story and said he did not work in that office but that he would, as he was filling in for someone else, come adn take a look. Surprise surprise, he shows up an hour later adn I tell him teh story again and he says that the tech should have never refused to treat all hte trees as that was not his call and that he would personally see that the guy came out and finished the job on Monday. Low and behold hte guy comes and does the rest of the treatment, but later I find that he has left me another bill. I had already paid hte first one, which I see was a big mistake on my part. So I call and get the TN office and she agrees that is is an error and says she will fix it. Then I get anohter bill and it is not fixed, so i call and want to speak to the local office and they tell me that I cannot talk to them, everything must come through them. After more attempts, I do get to the local office and the lady says she will issue the credit and do I want to cancel teh service. I am pretty hot by now so I said yes and she says she will send me a check, since I had prepaid the entire year service for the lawn. I asked her when I could expect it and she said 5 to 7 days. Two weeks go by and no check so I call again and she again says she will process it and it will be 5-7 more days. So i ask for her sueprvisor and she says there is no one in at this time and it will be after 5 before one arrives. I said fine, have her call me. She never calls. I call back hte next day and ask to talk to the sup that was supposed to call me back. I do not remember her name and she was there and I asked why she did not call me back and she said she was supposed to issue a refund and since it was taken care of she did not feel a call was warrented. I asked her since the check was supposed to take 5-7 days to process does that mean the original one was never processed and I was lied to about it the first time and she says yes. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent on the phone with so many people, telling and retelling the story to that point, which got longer and longer, and alonger. I was frustrated to tears, never finding anyone who seemed competent to do their job, from service to billing and customer service. I am amazed that you are in business. Which is a shame because my lawn was looking good. If i do not hear from you I will then know that this goes all the way to the top. I would not have written this letter as I was resigned to let it go after getting my check until I got my letter from you asking why I wanted to cancel my service and how to get me back as a customer. That would take a lot of nerve if it was not just a mass mailing form letter. It did give me your name and position to vent the reason too. So here you are it is all in your hands from here. In all the businesses I have worked at there are problems, and you cannot fix problems you do not know about. Now you know, ball is in your court. This is the worst customer experience of my life. There was no place where the buck stopped.

This company has been calling my home for about 2 weeks or more now and last night they called at 9:00pm to try and sell me something. I had asked them not to call this number anymore I'm not interested and hung up. They called back 2 minutes later and hung up. Now tonight about 8:45pm they called my house 4 times within a matter of 5 minutes. I answered and I could here several men in the back ground talking. I asked them if they were trying to prove something and I heard more talking and they hung up. Each time I answered the phone they didn't say anything and just hung up on me. I would really like these people to stop calling my home and harassing me just because I asked them not to call here anymore.

I've been with Trugreen for almost a year, i was just trying to get rid of the weeds, but they didn't do it right when they promised me last year and still want to collect money $55 for every 6 weeks. Thumbs down for Trugreen.

Trugreen is a horrible thieving company with dishonest workers. If you value your sanity and your hard earned money, stay away from this company. They have an enticing marketing strategy but it is all lies. You get no personal care and your prpoerty ends up looking like crap. Then the technicians bill you for work they do not actually do knowing that you are not at home to see them.

Truegreen sent me a letter by a collection agency. I am disputing this debt. How can I owe something for them if I just bought one time from trugreen for 1 year treatment and I paid them in advance? This is the best proof that I don't owe anything for them. If they are sure that I am in debt, they have to provide me a copy of the agreement signed by me with the commitment with them to provide the service that they are assuming is in debt. They are very disorganized. They charged my credit card more than the amount that they offered to pay in advance and I had to spend a lot of time to call them many, many times to solve the problem and get my refund.
Trugreen is horrible.

I had TruGreen come to my home after I planted new grass seed I informed them that it was new grass just recently planted they sprayed and killed the new grass then after promising to send someone to look at this person sprayed again I called office and someone else was to come and look at it the person never showed, I would never recommend TruGeen to my neighbors or friends

My supervisor is a money hungry * who professess to be a christian! All he cares about is money to pay for his fishing trip in florida! He"s an egotistical *! This company is a ripoff! Do not spend your money on tree feeds. Big mistake! Do not listen too # giving over the phone about * control when it rains, read your broucher-who"s lying? Smart customers know the difference... I hate working a lie. If you have a conscience like I do, you would not be running a businesses like this to better yourself at the cost of others...

I called TruGreen in March 2011 (Hagerstown MD office) to request an organic treatment plan. I am in the Chesapeake Bay drainage zone and it is requested that chemicals not be used on our lawns. I also have children that play outside daily. I paid well over $300 for the program. The first treatment was on March 21st and they put down herbicides(non-organic) that I didn't request. I canceled the treatment that day in fear that they would come out again and put down non-organic chemicals. Well, despite canceling the program and getting refunded, they came out again on June 6th and put down more non-organic chemicals. I called again but they told me that they couldn't cancel it until the clinician reported what chemicals he used as by law that has to be recorded. I asked that he call me the next day to let me know it was canceled. I took his name and phone number, J. Atwater, just in case. Well, he never called me so I called the number three days later and it was a discontinued # (go figure). In the meantime, I noticed that parts of my grass are now brown (that were not brown prior to June 6th). When I called the main office in Hagerstown, they told me Joe was on another line. I said I would hold. Then some woman came on. She said the account was canceled but when I explained that I now have dead grass she could offer no explanation but offered to have a clinician come out and look at it- OMG No!

A bit of background information: I have been a TruGreen client since the summer of 2008; I live in rural Champaign County and have a little over one acre of property that needs to be maintained. The services that I've contracted for in the past are for weed control and fertilization with anywhere from 4-6 applications per season. Each application runs $120.00.
I have been trying, unsuccessfully, for the past two months to obtain a pre-note card to get some idea when my 2011 applications will take place. This is a post card that has the number of applications and the approximate dates that the lawn will be serviced. I have received them in the past. On April 11th, I spoke with Courtney who confirmed that I have 4 applications this year and would mail me a pre-note card. On May 9th, will still no pre-note card nor lawn care application received, I called and spoke with Leslie who told me that she would put me back on the pre-note system and schedule an application ASAP with Chris (the man who does the scheduling). On May 13th, speaking with customer service representative Kathy, I inquired as to why my neighbor received an application that day and I didn't. I live out in the country and couldn't fathom why a service truck would travel all the way out for only one application. Kathy assured me that she would schedule an application for me ASAP (yes, again with Chris). On June 6th at 9am I called and spoke with Courtney again who told me that the pre-note system was discontinued 3-weeks ago and pre-calls to customers were taking their place. She agreed that 'yes, I should have had at least one application by now' and would hand deliver to Chris (yes, again with Chris) my information and request for an application. I also requested that Chris call me so I could speak with him about this issue. Needless to say it's been 31 hours, give or take, and I still haven't heard from Chris (the supposed scheduler). Nor have I receieved a response to my e-mail to TruGreen corporate.

My parents have used Trugreen for the past three years and since using their service had brown spots and was sold reseeding, aerating (which really made the lawn rough) and different chemical treatments. Each time promising this would correct the problem. I tried talking them out of using Trugreen last year but my parents were told Trugreen would be able to correct. Again this Spring they were pressured to renew but finally realized Trugreen was not helping their lawn. I ran a soil analysis from the local Feed Store on the lawn to find out it was deficient in lime and needs 3, 770 lbs to correct an 10, 000 sq. ft. lawn. The ph is at 5 which is very acidic. We were told he was surprised the lawn would even grow as the ph should be at 7. This was caused by too much Nitrogen. Why didn't Trugreen figure that out. It is going to cost over $500 in lime alone to correct and that is with me doing all the work. And since putting this much lime on would kill the lawn if all put on at once, will have to be divided by 1/3 this Spring, next Fall and the following Spring. Plus all the dead spots which is about 1/3 of the lawn need reseeding. If you use the service, insist on them taking a soil test to truly know what should be put on.

Canceled all services after 8 months. My lawn showed no noticeable improvement, bottom line. My neighbor hired Scotts two months ago and the difference between our two lawns was the deciding factor. In addition, I now find shrub in my front yard infested with Japanese beetles and their grub worms under my front yard grass. All while Trugreen has been applying "pesticides" and "insecticides". I've complained several times during the 8 months both to the Trugreen Corporate site and on the phone locally. Nothing was ever addressed but I thought I'd give their treatments a fair chance. I called them initially because I used them several years ago at my other home in GA where the results were dramatic. Something clearly has happened to quality control in this company. Even after I canceled, I have yet to receive any contact to find out why I canceled or to attempt to rectify the situation. This is customer service at its worst.