Avoid This Company, You Will Be Ripped Off
These people are a complete waste of your money. They are a rebranding of Appleseed, which was legendarily infamous. My Mom and several of her friends used them for a couple of years, generally without issue. I don't know if a staff revolt or something else happened there this year but their service has become an absolute joke.
My Mom has an angled driveway and a garage at basement level. In the past, the guy who came to do the driveway would clear it in such a way that it didn't fill in the start of her walkway (she doesn't pay extra to have that cleared.) The person they're using this year is lazily doing it so that her walkway is always filled in, causing a major safety issue. My Mom is retired and has limited mobility and can't clear this herself. Every time he's done this, she has called them and they said they would send someone to fix it and tell the driver not to do it again. They never send anyone and it always happens again. One time, they sent the "Shovelling Manager" over, who offered no apologies, no help and just told my Mom that "the team saw how big a job it was and just left" (seriously), then sat in his car for half an hour and took off. Every time it snows, she makes this complaint and they don't deal with it.
On top of that, they had the sheer gall to remind her that if we get more than 250cm total accumulation this year (likely), that she'll be charged an extra $10 per plow job, as per her contract. Never mind that they haven't been fulfilling their end of it at all. If they actually try to extract more money from her after this abysmal service, they'll be getting an in-person visit from me and quite possibly, a small claims suit. You do not screw over my family.
According to my Mom, she's been lucky too. Several of her friends have just never had the plows show up at all, having to clear their own driveways and get absolutely no response whatsoever when they try to reach out to them.
I don't know what's going on with this company but they deserve to (and likely will) fail. It's nothing less than a fraudulant operation at this point. AVOID AVOID AVOID!
- Approximate cost of services:
- $367.90
- Company Response
To the reader:
While we take every negative review here on HomeStars very seriously, I think it imperative that these complaints be put in a proper perspective here.
With over 6000 customers Metro is without a doubt the largest and most established residential snow clearing service in Ottawa.
If we’ve had say 50 bad review this winter there are still 5,950 happy well served, satisfied customers very pleased with our service delivery this winter. Sadly, ‘happy clients’ see no need to provide a positive review.
Basically 1% create 99% of the negative, sometimes hostile reviews.
I am in no way diminishing or minimizing these complaints and we address them and try to learn from each and every one of them.
We’ve experienced massive back to back continuous storms,broken several snowfall records yet have continually ‘been there’ every storm with effective service each time.
Yes, ‘some clients’ will inevitably get missed the odd storm for whatever reason And every company has misses, breakdowns, tardiness on a few routes during the odd storm.
By virtue of the fact we are the largest company it stands to reason we would have relatively more complaints from such a large clientele.
Compared to other companies however our complaint ratio is lower then most.
We are a highly organized, highly responsible and caring organization with great dedicated staff.
Each year we sign up hundreds of ‘new, inexperienced’ customers who just don’t know how a ‘private service’ operates. Unrealistic expectations and timelines create unhappy clients.
When assessing our efforts, please remember the 99% of our clients that have never complained or written negative reviews over the 25 years we;ce been serving them.
Thanks for reading this general reply but I thought it proper to provide the ‘other side of the coin’ here.
Ken Dale
President
Metro Snow and Ice