I signed up with homeadvisor and figured it'd be a great deal because I'm in the lawn service industry. If one $20 lead could could nab me a $25-$30/wk client, that's a great deal. The problem is... my first lead. She contacted me looking for a spring clean-up on her (abandoned/distressed) 3 acre property, along with some other work which included removing ivy from her chimney and removing over 100 cubic yards of sticks/logs/stumps/piles of debris that were 4-5 ft high running the length of her property like a giant wall.

All I wanted was a good review from my first homeadvisor lead to help get the ball rolling. I quoted her $100 for a spring clean-up (removing all debris from the yard), and was VERY clear that I'd get her an estimate on the ivy and brush removal (easily over $1-$2k worth of work). My employee and I spent 6-1/2hrs cleaning up her yard which hadn't been touched in over 2 years and despite knowing I was going to lose money on the job for the stellar review, I felt good about it.

Today she calls from the property saying not to bother coming back. I didn't remove the ivy from the chimney, cut down 3, 100+ft tall dead ash trees, or clear the brush that would require at least 2-3 trips with a 100 yard brush removal truck. Is she insane, or scamming me? I'm really mad and end up sending her an email that I'll not charge her at all if she writes me a good review. If she doesn't want to write me a good review I'll revise the service charges to reflect the actual cost of the work: $220 (and even that is a VERY good deal). Any advice?

I should mention, while I was removing 6 small cut down trees on her property as part of the clean-up, it looked like another landscaper/contractor had put in about a days worth of work and then just called it quits. I wondered why he hadn't just finished the entire clean-up himself and now I know why...