Had the following case not ended up in court, it would have been filed with the Better Business Bureau. Since it went to litigation, the BBB couldn't take it. Before you hire this company, please take a moment to read this. I wish we could upload the photos for you.
Two years ago, we hired Lawn Sprinkler Services to repair our sprinkler system. The upshot was that after the first visit, it quit working again after four days. They told us they would only charge us for parts since it sprang a leak in the same place they had "repaired" it. When it broke again, a couple of weeks later (again in the same place - again "parts only") - they found two new leaks. So - we had one leak they couldn't seem to get fixed, despite three tries - and two new ones. I was told my original company installed "thin" pipes and my entired system would probably need to be replaced. I hesitated. After visiting with the owner, I'm expecting a bill of $200 - $250 - Imagine my shock when we get a bill for $700. You guessed it - they were charging us for three complete visits. Their inability to fix the leak was proving to be a goldmine. Had I known that every time they failed to fix the leak, they were making $150 or more, I would have hired a new company. We disputed the bill.
By this time, summer was over and we shut down our system. I'll speed ahead - until we had another company look at my "thin" pipes, we held off on the bill. We paid $250 and the following summer, we dug up the pipes ourselves. We found that
1) the pipes they used to repair our leaks were actually THINNER than our originally pipes and 2) They had attached the clamps on so tight they'd cracked our original pipes.
(Hence the photos)
My husband and father - with NO sprinkler system repair experience between them managed to fix our system (it's still running). At this point, Lawn Sprinkler Service filed a lawsuit in the amount of $520.01 (I think it was the one cent that got me). And - here's the real kick - they did NOT file this in small claims court. They hired an attorney (this, according to the lawyer who represented us, is unprecedented - even Better Business Bureau has NEVER heard of a company hiring an attorney for this amount). The final determination is that we paid them the sum of $100 to go away. Our attorney told us we could have won this - we had the incriminating photos - and even more importantly, we had two inexperienced men who managed to fix the sprinkler system when the "professionals" couldn't, but we both teach and it didn't seem worth it to keep dragging it out.
There are a lot of sprinkler companies out there - I'd recommend using another one (obviously:) However, this one had a good reputation - in fact, a good friend of ours recommended them. I just wish the owner had been willing to work with us - talk with us - anything. We're not unreasonable; we're more than willing to pay for work that's done well. My dad's in the service industry - we've never "stiffed" anyone. I just have a problem paying for shoddy workmanship and, in this instance, our lawn was in worse shape AFTER we hired this firm.
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