We experienced a similar situation to the person who has a previous report about this company from May 17. John O'Connor appears to be both the sales rep and the owner of the Ecograss. He gave us our original estimate and it seemed like he had a good product at a reasonable price.
He took a 50% deposit at the time of the estimate. We had an installation date scheduled for May 12. No one showed up. We called around 11 am and got a voicemail. John returned our call in the afternoon saying they were detained by another job and could they come out tomorrow (May 13th) at 8 am to which we agreed. Once again, no one showed up. We called and left another voicemail message.
In the afternoon we received a call from an installer named Shawn saying once again they had been detained and would be out either later this afternoon or the next day. I suggested they get started this afternoon or we would request a refund or take our business elsewhere. Someone did show up late afternoon and dropped off a roll of grass and then left. They were scheduled to return at 10 am the next morning.
Guess what? No one showed up again. Finally, by 2pm two young men arrived and proceeded to "install" our turf. Both men stated that John was indeed the owner and not a very reliable business person. Not being familiar with the process of installation we had assumed they were doing the job correctly, however while watching I began to question their work and they assured me it was being done properly.
Once they left and we took a close look at the work we realized what a poor job was done. The grass had lumps and bumps throughout the yard, no weed barrier was put down first, all they did was spray Round-up on the dirt. They did not smooth the existing dirt, nor the decomposed granite sufficiently, so there were many dips and valleys in the turf.in addition they did not glue or staple the seams and these are coming apart. The edges and borders are not tucked and when they applied the infield material they did not spread it evenly, they just opened up bags of copper slag and slung it across the grass and then raked it rather than using the correct tool to distribute the material. We have copper slag all over the other areas of our yard that we did not turf.
When John came out the next day to get the balance of the payment we pointed all these things out to him. He said he would have someone out at 8 am the next morning to correct it. Yeah right. Well, needless to say no one showed up.in fact, we have made several calls and left several messages and an email message all to which we have received no reply. As the previous customer did, we too went to locate his physical address which is indeed a PO Box in a UPS store in Encinitas.
It's been almost two weeks now and we have not heard from or been able to contact Mr. O'Connor. We're guessing that he knows his installers did the job improperly but in order to fix it it would cost him more than the job is worth so he just decided to take our initial deposit and call it a done deal. I don't believe we will ever hear from him again and he may very well have skipped town by now since it seems other folks are looking for him too.
I guess on the upside we only lost half of our money, however now the turf must be repaired or replaced which will probably cost us even more in the long run. Because the seams are not intact we cannot let our dogs out into the yard until it is repaired or it will be destroyed. Please be warned this in not a reputable company.
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