Terms and Conditions of Service
Last updated 21/01/23
Communication
The day before your visit you will get a text message, usually between 10:00-12:00 reminding you of our visit. If you want anything specific carried out, please reply to this text message by the time stated (usually 18:00 hrs). The reason for this is about 18:30 I email all the gardeners with any specific requests from customers for their visits the next day. If your request isn’t received until the day of the visit, we will try to communicate it to the gardeners so it gets action but this may not always be possible on the day.
If you believe you are going to be at home when we visit I would still always text me any requests just in case we don’t see you.
Time of the visit
We will guarantee you a specific day that we will be visiting but we cannot guarantee times. The closest we can give is morning or afternoon. The gardeners are given the specific customers for the day and they do them in the order that best suits them taking into account route planning, and specifics for the day and many other factors. We used to specify times but could never stick to them.
Dogs
Several of our customers have dogs and all we ask is that you carry out a sweep of the garden the evening before we visit to remove any dog mess that you can see. We fully understand the odd one or two may be missed and we will collect them. However, if there are many on the lawn it may mean that we are unable to cut it that day.
Cancellation
We do ask for 48 hours cancellation of any visit. The ideal time to do this if we haven’t already been informed is when we send a reminder text the day before our visit.
The reason for this notice is that it allows us time to schedule another job to replace yours. As we are a seasonal business and have less work in the winter than the summers, we need to ensure our summer days are fully booked and a cancellation on the day or when we arrive leaves us no time to fill your slot, so we lose the money for that cancellation.
If you do cancel us when we arrive at your house, you will be charged 100% of your visit cost.
Access
Ideally access to your garden would be down a side passage and we would have the code or a key to your gate, so you don’t need to worry about remembering to leave the gate open for us. Any keys we receive are given a specific number, so they are only identifiable by us.
If you do need to open or unlock a gate or allow us access, please try to remember to do this as there is nothing more frustrating for you as a customer or us as gardeners to arrive at a property and not be able to gain access due to a gate not having been left unlocked.
Again, for the same reasons as last minute cancellations if we arrive at your address and cannot gain access there will be a charge of 100% of your visit cost and we will work on the front garden only for this. We will always try to contact you via phone or text if we arrive and cannot gain access as it may be you have just popped out locally and are able to return.
If you are going on holiday and don’t wish us to visit (we visit many gardens while customers are on holiday as we have access) please inform us ideally 2 weeks before.
When our gardeners are on holiday, we will still endeavour to visit you as normal, although the visit may be shorter than the normal so we can cover everyone we need to.
During a routine gardening visit quite a bit of waste can be accumulated, grass clippings, pruning, leaves etc. We encourage composting or the use of wheelie bins.
In Solihull the wheelie bins are provided free of charge by the council, but in Birmingham there is a yearly cost of approx, £50 for a fortnightly collection between the start of March and start of November (as at 13/12/22). We can provide you with a web link to sign up to this.
If you don’t have a wheelie bin or compost, we are able to take waste away but charge £17.50 per ton bag as being a business we are not allowed to take business generated waste to the tip so have to get it disposed of privately and ethically.
At the start of March, we review our price for the current upcoming season (April-March). The reason for this is we pride ourselves on providing a regular, reliable professional gardening maintenance service. In order to do this, we have to lease and insure new reliable vans, and replace our equipment regularly so it doesn’t break down, and if it does, we already have replacement items. We pay our gardeners above average wages to ensure we have the best we can find, who deliver a service we are proud of. We take into account several factors when determining if we need to adjust our prices:
● Current inflation based on CPI.
● Any increased running costs i.e. fuel, vehicles, equipment, insurances, software, etc
● National minimum wages increase to ensure we are always paying above NMW.
You will always be informed in advance of any price review for our service.
You will receive an invoice during the first week of the month which will be for any visits the previous month i.e. we will invoice you at the start or June for any visits in May.
Payment is due 15 days after the date the invoice is sent.
If the invoice hasn’t been paid within15 days, you will receive one reminder text or email.
For every full 7 days the invoice remains unpaid after the reminder text or email there will be a £10 late payment charge on your next invoice ie
7 days late £10
14 days late £20 and so on.
After the 14 days of non-payment, visits may be suspended until all outstanding invoices are settled.
We appreciate most of our customer always pay invoices promptly and we are very grateful but we are spending a lot of time chasing invoices.
There is an option of paying by direct debit via Go Cardless, so payments are automated. If you wish to use this service, please let us know.
The above policy is always subsequent to our discretion as we appreciate all situations are different.