When the customers are late to pay…
I understand that in this day & age, times get tough. People get caught short by unexpected expenses. Sometimes some of my regular lawn care customers who have been with me for years will get a bit behind. It happens. Thankfully, business is doing well enough that if it is a infrequent occurance I can continue to service to service the lawn for them & eventually most clients will get caught up and usually apologize for the delay in payment. No big deal.
I have a few now at this point that are multiple months behind, These are cleints who in the past may have fallen behind from time to time but have always done me right in the long run. So, I have continued service as I keep hearing from them that they should be able to pay us next week. Both cases that are coming to mind are monthly clients that I have had for years. I have these 2 cases now where account balances are up over $500. at this point.
So I ask for feedback from you. What do you think is the proper course of action?
1) Do I stop servicing the lawn & hope they pay up eventually? The problem here is 1 that they will have to hire someone else & then, when am I getting paid? Do I take them to court? Send their account to a collections agency? Bad P.R. either way right?
2) Do I just keep going as usual? Hope & pray they catch up? Which exposes my company to further risk if they continue to default?
3) Do I continue providing lawn & landscape services but on a lesser frequency or at a lower quality until they catch up?
The thought here is if I were to mow it, but less often they wouldn’t need to hire anyone else & I could maintian the relationship while saving some money by stretching out the service frequency. On one hand this seems like a good comprimise & after all, the customer shouldn’t really expect perfection when it comes to workmanship when they haven’t paid in 5+ months right?
On the other hand, doing a half hearted job to save a few minutes & dollars goes against everything I have built my business on! What if the neighbors were thinking “he does a nice job, I’d like to hire him next month & then see me doing a lesser quality job? They don’t know that the client hasn’t paid? I gain many, many new clients here in Charlotte County from word of mouth, & people who drive by or neighbors who have been watching us work from their windows.
I don’t want to comprimise my values here but I need to do something with these clients. I’d rather not just drop them, but It seems I may have to.
What do you think? Or what would you expect your service provider to do? I ask because as I serviced one of these lawns yesterday, FPL came & shut their power off. I thought wow…. I am apparently more patient than the power company? Or am I just too gullible? Dumb for continuing service so long without payment? The difference is, the customer can get mad at FPL for canceling service but HAS TO go back to them to resume service. He COULD choose another lawn company though. So what’s a guy to do?
Thank you,
Chuck Cantasano
AAA QUALITY CLEAN CUT, LLC.
Charlottecountylawns.com - Lawn Care Techniques
It seems to me, many folks I speak to don’t really understand their lawn and how to help keep it healthy. Proper watering is key to healthy turf. I can do the best job in the world on the mowing, but if the grass is water starved it will still look poorly.
There are many things that can help a lawn & I’ll give examples for each.
Irrigation: Irrigation should be done in the early morning or late afternoon when temperatures are cooler to minimize evaporation loss. Check & calibrate your system to make sure all grass zones are getting even watering, then do the same for the zones that irrigate your plant beds. Keep in mind your lawn typically requires more water than your plants do, so don’t drowned them.
Aeration: Aerating your lawn can be helpful even here in florida where the soil is sandy, It can still get compacted. Aeration can be done with a spike aerator which simply punched small spikes into the ground, or the prefered method is a plug aerator which actually removes little cores from your lawn & deposits them on the surface. This can allow root systems access to more air, water, & nutrients while giving the roots a little growing room. Ever notice why the grass growing up through those annoying fire ant mounds is so green & grew taller, faster than the rest of the lawn? The pesky ants inadvertantly aerated that spot in your lawn for you! See what aerating can do!
Fertilization: I’m sure you’ve heard before how important fertilizing can be. It gives your lawn the vital nutrients to grow really heathy & green! I have a biased opinion here but, have a pro do this for you. If you are going to do this task DIY, that’s fine too, but remember to follow the spread rates on the products bag, & water it in well! Especially if you are going to use a granualar product as I have seen many burn their lawns with fertilizer doing more harm than good. Ever notice that spot over the septic tank is thicker & greener all year long than anywhere else? Yup, you fertilize at least that part of your lawn on a regular basis. Wouldn’t it be great if the whole lawn looked that good? It can.
Call me if you need some help!
Chuck Cantasano
AAA Quality Clean Cut, LLC. - Lawn Care & Landscaping
(941) 380-3118
Free Mowing tips for Port Charlotte Florida
A client's healthy lawn with one of our trailers as the back drop.
For most Floridians, mowing their lawn is a hassle especially in those hot summer months when it’s wet & humid out, Which is also when the lawn needs the most attention.
The most common mistake I see home owners (and inexperienced lawn service owners) make is improper cutting heights. Many tend to cut their lawn too short to try to make the cut last longer before they need to go out & mow again. This is also called “scalping” the lawn. This not only weakens the turf & it’s roots, but can invite disease & many other problems. A good rule of thumb is you never want to remove more than one third of the blade length in any one mowing.
So, one popular turf type for the area, especially in the upper end neighborhoods of our community like parts of PGI & Deep Creek is St. Augustine grass. These lawns require more attention & irrigation than a common Bahia lawn but offer that thick green carpet look that many desire. St. Augustine should be mowed between 2.5″-4″ in height ( I tend to mow these at higher end of that spectrum by the way) So if you mow at 4″ in height keeping in mind the 1/3 rule, These lawns should be done when they reach about 6″ tall (about every 5-7 days).
On Bahia lawns, optimum cut height height falls in my experience around 3″- 4″ in height. Some say lower than that but I’ve found the ditches, hills, and grade imperfections common to many home lots in our area make this impractical as you end up scalping the higher spots in the grade (look outside, one of your neighbors lawns probably has a bald spot at the crown of his front swale due to just this problem). These lawns can tend to go a little more dormant in the cooler season but actually grow faster during the summer than St. Augustine. They should be done one a 3-7 day interval. I know, that’s a big swing, but some home owners with Bahia lawns want (& have) thick & very healthy lawn when it’s fertilized & properly irrigated. Some other yards are mixed with weeds & the owners don’t really care as long as it’s green.
I service some clients at both ends of this spectrum and offer any number of customizable service plans. When you decide to let a professional take over, give me a call. We can offer a full maintenance package or just simply take care of whatever green stuff happens to grow in your yard! Either way, we’d be happy to serve you.
The following images are borrowed from the University of Florida IFAS Extension Office. One is a great illustration of proper cutting heights for different lawn types. The other displays the drastic difference in root health when you start to mow your lawn at the proper height.
-Chuck Cantasano
AAA Quality Clean Cut, LLC.
http://charlottecountylawns.com
(941) 380-3118
Port Charlotte Lawn Services
AAA Quality Clean Cut, LLC. is a Port Charlotte based Lawn Care and Landscape business providing service to greater Charlotte County (Including Punta Gorda, Deep Creek, Englewood, Rotonda) and North Port, Florida. We are new to blogging and this is as much a “test” as it is a first entry. We offer everything from Mowing and Lawn care services,Landscaping, Landscape design and Installation, Plant bed maintenence, Trimming and Pruning. I look forward to future entries where I will go into more detail on all related subjects.
Thank you for reading and visiting
http://charlottecountylawns.com!
Office: (941) 625-2565
Cell: (941) 380-3118