Sherif M.

I've used this service on & off for about 4 years, and in all that time I never had a problem, until last week when I tried to cancel an order for the first time. That's when the true colors of the owners and/or operators of this company came out.

If you scan through the reviews of this company on this site and others, youll notice that most reviews are highly positive while a smaller but still significant number are very negative. The reason for this is that the vast majority of customers never have to deal directly with the company, only the contractors. Once they try to cancel an order or something else that requires contacting the site management, thats when the terrible customer service experience begins, as I discovered personally.

I had requested a mowing job on Tuesday, Sept 6th, but no one accepted the job, and then on Friday I requested a cancellation. The website in general is very poorly designed and hard to navigate, but the cancellation link is especially hard to find, more likely by design than through incompetence. I received a message saying it would take 24 hours to process my cancellation and that in the meantime the order might be reopened and accepted by a contractor, a tactic that seems to be designed to dissuade the customer from proceeding with the cancellation since it becomes much more difficult to get a cancellation once the order is accepted. The day after I cancelled the order, this is exactly what happened, and I messaged the contractor to ask him not to mow my lawn and he complied. 6 days later I still had not received a refund or even a message telling me that my cancellation was being processed so I contacted the website to ask about it. I was told that the only way the contractor would get paid was if I dropped my cancellation request, even though the contractor had never actually mowed my lawn. I got in contact with the contractor and he told me that the website administrators were withholding payment for some of his recently finished jobs as well as all future jobs until I resolved the issue with the website (which meant dropping my cancellation request). I then contacted the website and asked why they were holding the contractor's payment hostage in order to pressure me to drop my cancellation request. The person who responded (it said Lawnmowingonline support, but I suspect it was the owner/operator of the site) told me "F*ck you and the contractor, both of you get off my website." I was so shocked that a business could be this unprofessional that I took some screenshots (attached) of the exchange in case anyone didn't believe me. After this message, I received an email from PayPal indicating that my refund was being processed (along with a message from lawnmowingonline.com telling me I was permanently banned from using their site), but after that I received a text from the contractor saying they were still withholding payment and that I needed to add a message saying that the matter was resolved and include my address in order for him to finally get paid for his other jobs, which I did. The fact that the website tried to play us off each other is unprofessional and sleazy behavior to say the least.

I actually first posted a review on this website last week. A few hours after it went live, someone from the site posted a ridiculous response blaming the poor contractor for my negative experience, even though that clearly didnt jive with the reality of what actually happened which I described in my review. Then the contractor sent me a screenshot of some messages he exchanged with the website (attached) in which they refused to pay him for four jobs ordered by completely different customers (none of them me) until he got me to change my negative review to a positive one. In order to help the contractor get paid for his hard work, I deleted the review on this site along with another one on another site. Three days later, I contacted the contractor to see if hed received his money, and he said that not only has he not, but the company is now completely ignoring him.

This company is engaging in criminal activity. Last time I checked, its illegal to withhold payment for services rendered, no matter how small the amount. If the contractor wanted to, he could successfully sue this company for breach of contract, but because the amount of money in dispute is relatively small, the company owner knows it wouldnt be worth the time and effort of a lawsuit, which is why hes behaving in so brazen a manner.

Needless to say, this company is not worthy of your business. They have many competitors and I highly suggest you stay away from this amateurish operation run by some people with very, very low character. If this were a just world, then their pathetic website, terrible customer service, and predatory (and illegal!) behavior towards contractors and customers would get them shut down permanently.

UPDATE
Everything in the response below is a ridiculous lie. This man is a congenital liar and a thief. He's trying to pin the blame on the poor contractor who I'd never contacted prior to the website owner refusing to pay him for his hard work. If you read the other reviews on this site, it's just the same sad story, with different contractors getting screwed over by this guy. Everything this liar is saying is contradicted by the screenshots I've posted.

And to make clear to the owner/operator of lawnmowingonline: you sir are a liar and a cheat. The reason I am complaining about your company is because the way you treated me and the contractor, including saying F*ck you to both of us.