Dilemma, to pay or not to pay?

wishuponastar

Short version:


Asked people for price to tidy garden and cut small area of grass (4x3m) by a certain date. One person told me hourly rate but i asked him to tell me how many hours he thought. He went round for a look and instead of looking, he started on the grass. Didn't finish and wrote saying he wouldn't be able to come back for a week or so as he was away on hols for a wedding. He left it looking a mess (his own words) so still in square one.


My question is should he be paid for the hours he says he has done or not? My opinion is that it was his mistake and if he didn't think it was required to be done before a deadline why did he rush to start it that day he was only supposed to be having a look, without even having the go ahead to start.
Any advice appreciated.



End of short version.


Longer (much longer) version below. Read if you are bored, or have lots of time to spare :-)


An elderly relative of mine has a gardener to help with keeping their garden tidy. Problem is that it was always wet when the gardener came so the grass wasn't trimmed as much as she would have liked. She is very house/garden proud and had visitors coming round so she asked if I could get someone to do the grass before then.


As I am not there to help either I said I could try to find someone to do it. I wrote to several people and some gave various prices that were within budget but I had asked a local chap who does gardening for a price for it too (and he was my preferred choice as he lived nearby). He told me his hourly rate. I asked him how many hours it would take to tidy it up first of all and if he would be able to do it on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday as it would need done by Thursday. He agreed he would be able to do it by then and said he would go round for a look on Tuesday morning. My relative had a hospital appointment, so she couldn't stay in for him coming but given that he was only going round to look she didn't think it would have mattered that she was there or not.

Then I heard nothing from him at all, and I wrote to him several times that day and evening and then the next thing I know is he eventually wrote saying he has started 'strimming' the lawn and spent almost a few hours on it, so much so that the neighbours complained about the noise he was making as one was on nightshift and couldn't get any sleep so went and spoke to him. He said he won't be able to continue trimming it until the week after and it would take a good few 'sessions' at his hourly rate before he could even contemplate mowing it, which i find hard to believe. He said he is away on a holiday for a wedding but why he didn't mention this beforehand I don't know.

He left the garden rubbish in bags in my relatives neighbours part of the garden, when I had said there should be a garden bin to use. I was also clear about which part was owned by my relative. My relative gets help putting her bins out and in as she is unable to do so but i don't think the agency will put out bags and my relative says she thinks their local council won't collect them even if they are put out and that it would need to be in a garden bin, which she is unable to do. Any advice what to do with those?

I wrote to him and said i don't know why he started the work as he was supposed to be going round for a look that morning then to let me know how many hours he thought for the first tidy up, which he didn't. He didn't reply to that part.

He said he didn't know there was a deadline (even though i have it written in black and white which he agreed to) and that if he had known that then he would have said that he couldn't meet the timings and my budget of £35-40 for the first tidy wouldn't have covered it as he needed to spend a lot more hours on it (this is just for the lawn alone).

The thing is i can't but help feeling it was his mistake (or was it?) and if he had just said in the first place what he is saying now things would have been different as he wouldn't have started it at all. Not to mention that i didn't instruct him to start, just to look which he said he would (also in black and white).

He wrote to me saying good luck finding someone to do the grass area for my budget which i think is a little bit cheeky as there were several others that said they could do the whole lot, shrubs, weeding paviers, and the lawn for within my budget not just the lawn as i had enquired for all as i figured it may be more appealing that way and just as cheap for someone to do all than the lawn alone, and then the usual gardener could be given a week or two off.

I mean it is only a small patch of grass, about 4 metres by 3 metres (triangular in shape not measuring the longest side which runs diagonal if that makes sense) so i can't understand how it would be taking him so long to do,it's not as if it is a jungle. I could have trimmed the lawn with household scissors in a few hours!

So now I'm left wondering what to do as given i didn't instruct him to go ahead because he didn't tell me how many hours he thought it would take but just started of his own accord, i feel it is his mistake, plus the fact that he didn't even finish it and left the lawn still in a mess (his own words) and was unable to come back to do it before the requested time period.


Thanks for making it to the end.

Money_maker

This is very long winded but spending several hours strimming a 3 x 4m garden sounds a little extreme unless it was an absolute jungle.

mufi

OP, sorry, lost the will to live trying to read this. Perhaps editing it a little to produce paragraphs will elicit a few more responses?

wishuponastar

Thanks for the reply, and apologies for the long windedness. I wanted to put all the detail but i do need to work on using less words.


It wasn't a jungle, and the supposed 2 hours (his word) strimming wasn't even enough, he said he needed to come back again and again which makes me a little suspicious of his intentions, either that or he is a very very slow worker where he daydreams a lot or moves so slowly that the grass will be growing under his feet (literally) :-)

wishuponastar

mufi wrote: »

OP, sorry, lost the will to live trying to read this. Perhaps editing it a little to produce paragraphs will elicit a few more responses?

Ok thanks i will try and do that. Sorry you lost the will reading it. I'll try again.

bouicca21

You are going to need photos to establish what sort of jungle it is - and even whether he's doing the right garden. I wouldn't have thought one used a strimmer to mow a lawn.

Yet the fact that he has created several bags of garden waste suggests he's done a lot of work, far more than just cutting an overgrown lawn - or that the 'lawn' was knee deep ... When I got an overgrown flower bed sorted it created 6 sacks of rubbish and took one man working non stop for just over 7 hours. That bed was also a triangle, something like 2 metres on the vertical and horizontal sides.

In my area garden waste is only collected by the council on payment of a fee, and even then they won't take it if the bags are too heavy. So it's pay up or drive it to the tip, pardon, recycling facility.

wishuponastar

Annoyingly I don't have photos of it, i can ask to see if my relative has but I'd be doubtful.


I don't know how big the bags are, but I'm assuming normal black bin liner size possibly.
Also i had suggested he could price for strimming instead of mowing, if it was easier for him, just so long as it was cut short so that it was trim and tidy, as given it's small size i didn't think this was an unreasonable suggestion.


If i was there i could get rid of the rubbish but I'm not and even paying for the couple of hours still doesn't mean he will come and do something with the rubbish bags he left. I had said he could use the brown garden waste bin for waste (thinking that would be easier for him) and also making his price cheaper.


I guess i could just perhaps ask the neighbour if they wouldn't mind moving them into my relatives bit of garden and i could move them when I'm next visiting.


With the flower bed, I'm assuming you were taking care not to cut flowers etc which doesn't apply to the grass/lawn. And with the flower bed job, when you saw it you would have had an idea how long it would have taken beforehand and priced accordingly and got approval before starting (depending on if it was your own or not), which is why i had asked him to give me an idea. I mean i can understand one may not get it exact but to the nearest hour or thereabouts.

wallbash

bouicca21 wrote: »

You are going to need photos to establish what sort of jungle it is - and even whether he's doing the right garden. I wouldn't have thought one used a strimmer to mow a lawn.

Yet the fact that he has created several bags of garden waste suggests he's done a lot of work, far more than just cutting an overgrown lawn - or that the 'lawn' was knee deep ... When I got an overgrown flower bed sorted it created 6 sacks of rubbish and took one man working non stop for just over 7 hours. That bed was also a triangle, something like 2 metres on the vertical and horizontal sides.

In my area garden waste is only collected by the council on payment of a fee, and even then they won't take it if the bags are too heavy. So it's pay up or drive it to the tip, pardon, recycling facility.

If the 'lawn' is knee high, I would certainly have started with a strimmer. Even with my petrol mower extremely long grass is problem

Davesnave

It's perfectly possible to use a strimmer/brushcutter to mow an unkempt lawn, but using something without enough power would mean it might take too long.

I could strim down a 3x4 metre lawn in 5 minutes or less, even if it was a foot high in grass. My chicken orchards frequently are.

Raking and picking up would take another 15 minutes, and then going over it with a sutable mower another 10 minutes. Say 45 mins overall for getting tools out/putting away etc.

Working a bit more slowly, because it's an hourly rate would still only take an hour or so. It's only the size of a living room!

mufi

wishuponastar wrote: »

Ok thanks i will try and do that. Sorry you lost the will reading it. I'll try again.

Many thanks - re-reading my post, it comes over as a bit rude. Sorry.

bouicca21

The 7 hours on my jungle of a flower bed involved removing everything, digging it over and replanting.

I'm inclined to say pay him for two hours, put it down to poor communication and experience. He's clearly done some work and it is difficult at a distance to work out how much, let alone how much was needed.