Anything Outdoors


Country United States
State Burkina Faso
City Richmond
Address 19693 State Hwy 23
Phone 320-597-2020
Website www.anythingoutdoorsco.com

Anything Outdoors Reviews

  • Sep 11, 2014

I am writing to lodge my complaint against Anything Outdoors and its owner, Scott Jones. As a background, we were referred to Scott through a friend and had him come look at our yard in April. We moved into our house in December and the house had been purchased and somewhat updated out of a foreclosure from a few years ago. The yard needed some TLC and we wanted to go ahead and spend the money to completely overhaul the front so that we were in the position of just needing to maintain it going forward. Neither my husband nor I have a green thumb or any experience on caring for a lawn other than mowing and watering, and so we relied on Scott's expertise in the process. We were quoted that to complete our yard, to include removal of two trees, several large bushes, add flowers to several beds, add 3 water catches and piping to funnel out excess water from around the house, and to resod the entire front yard with Bermuda sod with approximately 14 pallets of sod would cost $7400. This was about 25% higher than the original rough estimate, but as our friends were involved with Scott, and we felt we could develop a long term relationship with him for future projects, we proceeded.

We signed a contract outlining the general services to be performed, to include putting down lime on the yard in advance of the sod. As part of the contract we were instructed to let them adjust the sprinkler system and that we were not to change the watering schedule as the new lawn would need to be watered every day for a month and then they would scale back the watering after that time. Also, they indicated that the lawn would need a month to grow and set before we would be able to have it mowed. I went to pick flowers with Scott's mother a few days before work began. At this point we had opted to keep all of the trees in the yard and remove the overgrown azaleas. When the work began on May 8, it was clear that the job was more than they had bargained for. I had an understanding of how the water catches would be placed and the water funneled through the backyard, in the end, they only used 2 catches and didn't funnel the water back as far as I believe we had discussed. Additionally, they did not lime the yard, fertilize it or roll it out to ensure proper contact with the ground, at this time. The work was completed on May 11. A full pallet was thrown away. During the work Scott noted that he would be eating the cost of the lost pallet, but it appears that what he really meant is that we would still be paying for the lost pallet and the labor cost as we were not refunded any money on this. We offered the pallet to my father who was also looking to resod his yard, and noted based on previous estimates that while we could give him a pallet, he would still need to get an additional 50-100sqft of sod to complete his yard. We were told by Scott that it would not make it until it could be laid and so the pallet was totally thrown away.

We followed Scott's instructions with regard to the watering schedule and it was watered every day under the schedule he set and was not mowed. After a month we contacted them to see if someone would be coming out to mow and if we could change the watering schedule since the lawn by this time was getting quite overgrown. We also discussed replacing some of the sprinkler heads at their suggestion and this work should have commenced the last week of May or first week of June.

At this point, Scott's team had been hired to lay approximately 550sqft of zoyja sod and put in a small sprinkler system at my dad's house in the last week of May for a quoted price of $1000. While laying the sod, he contacted my husband to complain that my father wanted additional sod above a pallet, which is only 450sqft. Thinking that he was doing the right thing by Scott and my father and not knowing fully what the agreement was, my husband indicated that we would pay the difference and when asked for a quote we were told it would cost an additional $200. My concern here was that at the time of the original quote at the end of April, and during our job in mid-May, and based on the quotes my dad had sought from Scott and another provider, he had requested 550sq ft, we knew from the beginning that it would take a bit more than a pallet, and so I was confused as to why that was now an issue and believed that if Scott had made an error in his estimation of cost then that was on him since it had been made clear that the expectation was for a bit more than a pallet. At the end, we paid the additional cost, which ended up being the cost of an entire pallet at $200, plus labor at an additional $200, plus tax, for a total of $424. Scott's team brought out only about a quarter of the full pallet that we paid for and we never saw or had access to the additional pallet. My father was not made aware of this and we have not told him that we paid for any part of his yard. In addition, Scott's team only installed 3 sprinkler heads, since a 4th was needed to cover the whole area, my father, who was in congestive heart failue and in fact, later that month required open heart surgery, was forced to complete the work, In addition, they installed a used sprinkler timing system on the outside of the house that my father still can not get to set correctly. Given the above, I was extremely upset with Scott for taking advantage of all of us and cancelled any further work related to changing out our sprinkler heads on our yard on June 1.

Our yard was finally mowed and then mowed again on June 11 and June 26. These are the only times they have mowed our yard. After the first month, we started to notice that our yard was covered in weeds. In every single piece of sod that they laid there are numerous weeds. None of the weeds have been treated after numerous requests and complaints. The yard has still not been limed and now Scott has told us that he no longer wants our business and that he will not lime the yard as per the contract. We were promised the best looking yard in the neighborhood, and we expected that after having spent $7400. We now have an even more embarrassing yard than we had in the first place since it is clear that we spent a lot of time, money and effort to get the lawn in prestine shape and now a few short weeks later it has dead spots, bare spots, thin spots and is covered in weeds. Our neighbors have asked us what happened and made comments on how the yard originally looked, how much we've watered and how it looks now. We have asked him if he really wants to associate his name with this kind of work and he believes that he has left us with a beautiful yard. He blames the yard's fault on us and says we did not water to their schedule. This is patently false as the watering is on the timer that they set, with access to our garage that we gave them, and further our watering bill from May 6-June 6 is 10x that of the prior month at over $400. Since the watering schedule wasn't changed until sometime in June, I expect that soon we will be receiving our next water bill for a similar amount. We've actually watered so much that we have mushrooms growing in the yard.

In addition, they planted 18 azalea bushes. Of those, 4 look like they are dying and 3 are probably already dead. We made it clear to Scott that we expected him to hire him to maintain the yard, to include the plants. The times that they have been to our yard, they have completely overlooked the care of the other plants to even check if modifications needed to be made to their planting or watering. He claims that sometimes you just get a bad plant. I find it hard to believe that is the case when we are losing almost half of them and on further inspection when the dead plant was removed, some of them died due to poor drainage in the soil.

At this point, to correct the damage and get the yard we believe we had every right to expect will cost us getting someone else out here to treat the yard, correct the sprinklers, and overseed. We are currently working on obtaining estimates on what it will take to fix, but prior estimates from TruGreen to fix our yard before were in the range of $1,500.

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