To say that we were frustrated with our experience with Curbz would be an understatement. In a nutshell: Hire another gardener.
Based on the great reviews listed previously on homestars, I contacted Jude in early spring and asked her for a referral since my house is 2km outside of her zone. To my surprise, she offered to take me on, saying we weren’t too far and she had another client close by. She came out and discussed our project in detail – and we were very impressed by her professionalism. The good part ends there.
We waited a month for the first visit by her crew. When they came, apparently they didn’t have the project list so several tasks were not touched. They did, however, manage to rip down a beautiful vine in our backyard. Another month and many excuses later, they came back to finish up – and again left the project incomplete, saying they forgot some of their tools. (It's worth nothing that at this point it had been two months since our meeting with Jude and, although she had insisted she would only take us on if we bought an obscenely expensive maintenance package, there had been no maintenance visits at all.)
Among our project items was the restoration of a stone path that was sliding apart in our front yard. Jude proposed to re-level and re-lay the stones, and add a stone border. Instead, a guy showed up and moved only the last row of stones into place and put an ugly plastic guard on 40% of the path. It didn't come close to fixing the problem properly. The list goes on… badly laid new sod, dried out plants, sun plants placed in the shade, shade plants placed in the sun…
We consider ourselves to be honest and fair people. We gave Jude the benefit of the doubt for months. In the end, Jude was the one to fire us – because we were outside her service area. And despite admitting that she was not able to deliver services as promised, she sent us a final invoice for more than the initial proposal.
If you’re looking for a good gardener, who bills fairly and shows up every week – don’t hire Curbz.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $250.00
- Company Response
There is always a fine line to be walked when offering clients a maintenance package. We make it clear that they are buying our time and that the priorities are theirs to determine, but sometimes in a rush to have the garden looking just the way they expect it, they forget that the maintenance time they purchased does not allow for us to do it all in one visit. As with many of our clients, it can take an entire season to bring a garden up to standard, working on different projects with each visit.