Why cheapest is not always best when choosing a lawn mowing provider.

I have been doing lawn maintenance professionally for over a decade now. I have learned a few things over the years. I no longer worry about providing my services at the absolute lowest price. I can not provide the level of service that my customer's deserve and expect and also provide the lowest price in town. 

There are many things to consider when choosing someone to mow your lawn. As with anything else, you should resist the temptation to hire someone based solely upon price.

Since going into business for myself, I have insisted that my company operate by one rule. That rule is that we will treat the customer the way that we would want to be treated. When I hire a company to do work at my home, I insist upon, and expect the highest quality work possible. I insist upon honesty, integrity, punctuality and professionalism. My customers should expect no less from me.

When we (Moore Services for Your Money) make an appointment with you (to do a job or to provide an estimate) we show up when we told you we would show up. You, as a customer can count on it. Sadly, this is not the case with most of the very low cost providers.

Life is not perfect, however, and things do not always go the way that we plan. Sometimes, regardless of how diligent we may be, we run into problems. Occasionally equipment fails, jobs take longer than expected, etc. and this causes us to run a little later than expected. If this happens, we never leave you wondering what has happened to us. We contact you as soon as possible. Sadly, this is not always the case with our low cost competition.

This is our Gravely professional zero turn mower.
As I write this, it is awaiting repair. We do have a couple of
backups for this mower so our customers have no indication that
this mower is out of service.

Equipment maintenance is time consuming and sometimes expensive. This is something that we understand. Our equipment is in the best possible working order. The blades on the mowers are sharp (we sharpen them about once ever couple of weeks (minimum) during mowing season. Unfortunately this is almost never the case with low cost providers.

We have literally decades of experience doing professional lawn service. We know how to do the job properly. Properly does not always mean really fast. We take the time to do the job properly. We do not have 30 other yards to do the same day we are at your house. We schedule the jobs so that we have plenty of time to do the work properly even if we run into some sort of unexpected delay. Unfortunately this is simply never the case with low cost providers. You see, in order to make any profit at all, they must do as much volume as possible. We stress quality over quantity. Our reputation rests upon the quality of our work and the satisfaction of our repeat customers. We are not in a race here.

This is our trailer getting the springs replaced. This happened a few
years ago. The phone number on the trailer is from when we
operated in Tampa, FL. We no longer service that area.

We are not just a guy who bought a lawn mower, a pickup truck, a string trimmer and maybe a blower and started mowing yards for the public. The most important equipment that we own all have back-up plans in place in case they have to be out of service. This is absolutely necessary in order for us to provide the reliability that our customer's should expect. This is almost never the case with the low cost providers.

As far as I know, we are the only provider in town that cross-cuts yards whenever possible. What I mean is that if I cut the yard from left to right, I then cut it from front to back. This makes a much nicer cut and avoids any missed areas. It also takes a little more time. We feel like it is worth the extra time.

So, if you are looking for the absolutely lowest price in town and that is your only consideration, do yourself a favor, don't contact us. We will likely not be the lowest priced guy in town. We will offer you a very fair price for the best and most reliable service available. If that interests you and you are in Fayette County, Georgia or some of the surrounding area, please contact me for an estimate!

By the way, we are Fayette County natives. We know the area very well. We grew up here. I am a 1983 graduate of Fayette County High School. My family goes back several generations in this area. I can tell you all sorts of history about the area. If you live in Fayette County, why not do business with the natives? There are not that many of us left!

Till next time

-William Moore

Moore Services for Your Money
678-702-4791
mooresvs.com

A few pictures of some of our work:

Important things to consider when getting estimates.

We are happy to provide our customers with no cost estimates for the services that we provide. However, when you are gathering estimates, it is important that you understand the scope of the work and the details of the estimate. This is of particular importance when you are using on-line services such as porch.com, Angie's list, yelp, craigslist, etc.

There is a prevalence today of services that provide a customer with several estimates for a job. The estimates come from several contractors. Please be cautious when using these services to get quotes. Many of these services provide very little job information to the contractors. It is sometimes extremely difficult to accurately bid a job under these circumstances. If the contractor is not allowed to submit questions about the job before providing the estimate, this should be a "red flag" for you. Another problem with many of these services is that the contractor is paying for these "leads". You are not necessarily getting the best contractors this way. You are getting the contractors who have paid for the lead.  Also beware of services, such as Angie's List that rate contractors. Understand that all the contractors who are "rated" high are paying for that privilege.  The best way to find a quality contractor is to ask people for whom he has worked.

Walter White always provides appropriate measurements with
quotation requests :). 

As a service provider, it is always difficult to estimate a job based simply upon a description in an email. Pictures and measurements are essential. Ideally, the contractor should visit the job site to gather the information to more accurately compile an estimate. However, this is not always practical.

All of our preliminary estimates detail the work that is to be done. Make sure that each vendor who provides you with an estimate also provides sufficient detail of the work to be done. Otherwise, you are likely not really comparing estimates for the same work.

When comparing estimates, it is essential that each potential contractor is bidding on the same scope

This is a picture from a job that we recently quoted. The drywall
was cut out by a plumber to access plumbing that needed repair. We did not
simply quote the repair, we also quoted the finishing and painting.

of work. This sounds easy but it is not always as simple as one would think. For instance, when we estimate a drywall repair, we always estimate it as a finished job. In other words, we include the taping, finishing, sanding and painting/texturing. We have found that some of our competitors simply quote replacing the drywall. Sometimes this makes our estimate look expensive until you actually understand the scope of the work. We quote it this way because this is what most customer's really expect. Most customers want the finished job to look like it did before the damage occurred. If this is not what you want, we will be happy to simply replace the drywall but we need to know this in order to accurately estimate the job.

It is also important that you verify that the quality of the material is consistent from one estimate to the next. For instance, when we repair wood fences and gates, we never use nails as fasteners. We always utilize wood screws. Depending upon the size of the job this may add cost. We also always use only treated wood on outdoor applications. This is the proper way to do the job but, it adds cost.

When we do interior or exterior painting, we use rollers and brushes. We do not spray, We find that this gives us a better finished product. Because of this, our quotes are sometimes higher than those of contractors who spray.

Read the estimates closely when comparing.

I suppose the real point here is that you should always make sure that the quote covers the work that you want to have done. In addition to that make sure that the method used to do the work is of an acceptable quality. Generally, if an estimate seems too good to be true, it is. You will ultimately not be happy with the work if you do not understand the work that is to be done.

Also, I strongly recommend that you understand how additional costs will be handled. An estimate is just an estimate. Sometimes costs fluctuate due to circumstances that are beyond the contractor's immediate control (i.e. rising material costs, damage that was previously hidden, etc.) We immediately notify the customer before proceeding if the cost goes up. If the customer makes changes to the job we require a change order that details the change in work scope. It is always a great idea to minimize surprises. Make sure that you and your contractor agree on what will be done if changes are needed.

I hope this post has helped you to more accurately compare estimates.

Please contact us at any time if you need an estimate!

Till Next Time

William

                      

How to watch HD television programming without monthly payments.

This is not HD TV but, this is what many folks think of
when they think of over the air antenna television

Many people today are under the impression that in order to watch local television programming they must pay a monthly fee.  The monthly fees are generally paid to a cable provider or a satellite TV provider.

Since the advent of television, programming has continued to be available over the air at no cost. In the days before High Definition digital television and before cable television, it was common to receive all of your programming over the air at no cost.

The programming was received using an antenna. Some antennas were internal to the television. Some antennas were set top antennas. Some antennas were outside the house or in the attic. The point is that all programming was relieved using an antenna.

This is a 1950s era outdoor (VHF only) Television Antenna

Before the advent of digital television signal, all of the signals were analog. Analog used a much wider bandwidth and was prone to snowy and fuzzy images if your television was not near enough to the transmitter. Because the bandwidth was so wide there were not many channels from which to choose. The wide bandwidth, the power required to transmit the signal, and the expense of the transmitting equipment limited the choices of channels. This was especially true in areas of the country with smaller populations.

Because of this, when most folks think of antenna television, they remember the small choice of channels (when I was growing up in Fayette County Georgia, we had 4 channels).

However, over the years, this changed. In the beginning, we only had VHF channels. These were numbered 2-13. Later on we added UHF which gave us channels 14-69. Even with the advent of UHF, in Fayette County, I could only get about 2 or maybe 3 additional channels when I was growing up.

To get decent reception, many people had to erect large outdoor antennas with rotators that allowed you to move the antenna to get better reception on certain channels. Each channel usually required that the antenna be oriented in a slightly different direction for optimum reception.

This is how over the air television remained for decades.

The resolution and screen size of television sets improved drastically over those decades. But, for many years, the tuners remained essentially the same. Which meant that we had the same fuzzy pictures and limited channel selection on over the air television.

This is a very old, low power analog broadcast
transmitter

Eventually digital television transmission began. Because the signal was now digital it required much less bandwidth. A digital signal is basically (simplified) a series of ones and zeros. Therefore, there is no more snowy image. The image is fundamentally either present or absent. This is actually a gross over simplification of the technology but, it is essentially accurate in the context of this discussion.

The broadcasters had a lot of money tied up in analog equipment. There were also a very large number of televisions installed in people's homes that were not capable of receiving a digital signal. For those reasons (and probably others of which I am unaware), broadcasters were not quick about implementing digital transmitters.


It happened that the FCC needed to free up some of the bandwidth that was allocated to television transmission. The old analog equipment was not making very efficient use of the bandwidth by modern standards.

This is a low power high definition broadcast transmitter.
Modern broadcasters use something similar to
this with the appropriate power amplifier

Therefore, the FCC forced the broadcasters to convert to digital transmission. The digital transmission has a  variety of advantages. The transmitting equipment makes much more efficient use of bandwidth. This allows broadcasters to offer many additional channels in a cost efficient manner.

At the moment, at my home in Fayette County, Georgia I receive over 30 digital channels and pay no monthly fee at all.

There are some drawbacks. I do have to use an antenna. I built my own antenna from components that I had in my shop. I have an extensive background in electronics and will be happy to build an antenna for you as well!

I mentioned that there are not snowy images any longer. However, if you are on the fringe of the broadcaster's coverage area, you may experience pixelization. In other words the signal will sometimes go in and out. But the picture is many orders of magnitude better than the old analog signal. I get images that are usually better than that of the local cable television providers.

This is the top view of the prototype that I built for my parents.
It is sitting outside on top of my smoker for testing. It was
eventually installed in the attic.

I am working on prototypes of an antenna that I am planning to begin offering to customers. I have one of these mounted outside my house. The antenna in the pictures here is one that I built for my parents who live next door to me. This antenna is only about a foot long. I mounted it in their attic. I also installed a small amplifier between the antenna and the television. My parents get about 30 channels with this small attic mounted antenna.

This is the front view of the prototype. The finished product will
look prettier and will probably not have all the electrical tape

You may have noticed that televisions today no longer have the built in antennas. They all require external antennas. The antenna will have to be attached outside the television. Because of the way modern houses are designed, it is sometimes difficult to determine the proper placement of the antenna. There are also a wide variety of antenna choices.

If you have more than one television, as most homes do today, you will likely want a central antenna for all the televisions. These do not have to be outdoor antennas. Many times they can be installed in the attic or elsewhere in the home.

One of our antennas may be right for you. Alternatively a combination of our antenna and an inexpensive amplifier may be the correct solution. Whatever works best at your home we are happy to help.

We at Moore Services for Your Money are happy to work with you on designing an appropriate antenna system for your location so that you do not have to pay the monthly cable television fees simply to get local television.

Please contact us to arrange a consultation and estimate. You may click here and use this form to request an estimate or consultation. You may also call 678-702-4791.

Till next time

-William

William Moore
Moore Services for Your Money
678-702-4791
mooresvs.com