A man has said he will ‘can’t trust anyone’ after landscapers paid £11,000 left his garden looking ‘like a bombsite’.
Richard Newton said his driveway had also been damaged by the conmen, who left the job unfinished, and has had to ‘dip into his pension pot’ to get another more reliable firm to finish the work.
Mr Newton, 55, hired local firm D&F Landscape UK after posting an advert for landscapers on a website called Bark.
Two workmen who saw his advert then came to his property and quoted him £19,000 for the work.
Mr Newton and his wife, from Ilkeston, Derbyshire were also given the addresses of three properties around Nottinghamshire where the firm said they had completed jobs.
Richard Newton paid landscapers £11,000 to give his front garden a facelift. Instead they left it looking ‘like a bombsite’ without finishing the work
Mr Newton and his wife hired local firm D&F Landscape UK after posting an advert online
‘That was the bait on the hook and I bit it. All three properties looked fine and we got rave reviews from the customers saying work had been carried out on time and the landscapers bend over backwards to make sure that you get what you want’, said Mr Newton, who works as a warehouse supervisor for a tyre company.
‘Now we’ve £11,000 up the spare, a damaged drive, front and back garden – the whole thing just looks like a bomb site. I’ve had to get another company in to start from scratch.’
Mr Newton explained that he paid the landscapers £1,000 at first to secure the booking, followed by another £5,500, and then £4,000.
He added that he was struggling to sent them the money because his bank was trying to block the payments.
He said: ‘At the beginning, I was struggling to do the bank transfer because my bank point blank told me that they didn’t trust him.
‘But because I’d gone to the three houses to look at his previous work, I went ahead with it. And I kicked myself for that but especially for the fact that I paid the extra money before he decided not to come back.’
Landscapers commenced work on the May Bank Holiday, telling the family the work would take approximately three weeks.
Despite digging up and scraping out the front gardens, the workmen soon abandoned the job.
‘He kept telling me he was waiting for a grab machine to come and when that finally happened and it was parked on my drive, my drive started to cave because of it. He told me in a text message he was going to fix it, but it never happened,’ said Mr Newton.
He continued: ‘I had to dip into my pension pot because of all of this.
‘It’s going to cause hardship longer down the line but right now my main concern is making sure he doesn’t do this to anybody else. I’d love for him to turn around to me and give me my money back but that’s not going to happen.
‘I don’t trust anyone. The landscaper we have doing the work now, I’m always asking him questions and making sure he’s doing what he promised. Giving out that kind of money again was hard.’
After taking thousands of pounds upfront, the landscapers abandoned the work halfway through and left the garden looking a mess
Mr Newton said he had to ‘dip into his pension pot’ to get another firm to finish the job
Mr Newton has reported the matter to both Nottinghamshire Police and to the Bark website.
A spokesperson for Bark said: ‘We sincerely regret hearing about Mr Newton’s unfortunate experience with the service provider he found through Bark.
‘While the vast majority of our users have positive experiences, we understand that issues can occasionally occur given the large number of transactions that take place on our platform.’
The website added: ‘We can confirm that we are committed to maintaining a high standard of service on our platform.
‘Should a provider fail to meet those standards, appropriate actions, including the removal of their profile, may be taken following an investigation.’