Gentle Touch Gardenening-Shambolic!
Gentle Touch Gardenening-Shambolic!
We contacted Gentle Touch Gardening early April 2021 to agree works to our back garden which included laying a self-binding gravel patio area with a pergola standing on it and to plant some mature trees. They were happy to do this but suggested that it might be better for us to source our own trees. As a result we ordered trees online from a company that said the trees were not available until late July. Gentle Touch said they were able to start our job early July so it was agreed that works would start then and the trees could be planted on their arrival later that month. We thought that this was OK so we duly paid our 10% deposit, late April.
Towards the end of June, Gentle Touch were contacted and we were told that there were problems sourcing the wood for the pergola and we would be contacted when they had more to tell us. We waited another few weeks, contacted them again requesting them to come and plant the trees which had now arrived mid July. Nothing was heard from them. Further contact established that they would come ‘next week’ to plant them. Next week came and went with no communication. Contact again by us was made and we were promised a Friday. Stayed in all day waiting and at 3:15pm had an email saying ‘sorry can’t make it today, please don’t wait in’!! We decided to allow another week to see if they would arrive or contact us- nothing.
By this time it was clear that, for whatever reason, Gentle Touch had no intention of carrying out work that they had effectively entered into a contract with us, requesting a significant deposit from us, and holding on to that deposit for five months.
I ran my own small business successfully for thirty four years. Customers accept delays and frustrations as long as you communicate effectively and regularly with them. Problems do arise in business and more so now in a pandemic than ever, but not explaining, informing and updating customers is guaranteed to increase those frustrations.
Communication-apart from requesting our deposit, contact from Gentle Touch was only ever as a result of us contacting them. In our experience, they will not answer calls to the mobile phone during the day so you can’t get a ‘live’ response if you need it and have to leave a message. You get a response to an email but with short one-liners with little detailed information. If the company is experiencing staffing, material sourcing, overbooking problems, we have not been updated or informed of that so it is difficult to be sympathetic to it. The pandemic is affecting business continuity but we have dealt with companies in other sectors that keep you updated and informed of those difficulties and apologise for them.
Professionalism-letting people down for a job you’ve waited five months for and not keeping you updated is not my idea of how to treat customers in a service industry. We are now in a position where we are entering Autumn/Winter without the work being done, with expensive mature trees left unplanted in our garden.
Reliability-non-existent, the number of times we were waiting at home for an arrival that never happened is incredibly wasteful of our time. When it was clear that our work was not going to be done, we requested a full refund of our deposit-it took three emails over a week to get it back-it takes two minutes to refund.
I notice form previous poor reviews that Gentle Touch use a tactic of stating that they do not have a record of the reviewers name in their records or that a particular type of work was carried out. I believe that this is an attempt to convince the reader that these are false negative reviews from competitors maybe? I can assure you, we do exist, we paid a deposit and it appears, have had exactly the same problems with Gentle Touch Gardening Services that others have also experienced.
Based on our experience of this company, if you are searching for gardening/landscaping services to be done, I would suggest you look elsewhere.