Spokane TruGreen to refund $83,000
The Spokane branch of a nationwide lawn-care company wrongly “swept” away tens of thousands of dollars in credits from customers’ accounts, Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna said Thursday, announcing an agreement that could result in refunds for hundreds of Eastern Washingtonians.
Tennessee-based TruGreen L.P. — which denies any wrongdoing — has agreed to refund more than $83,000 to customers, as well as paying more than $52,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs to the state.
The disappearing credits were typically small; most were $25 to $75, according to spreadsheets provided by McKenna’s office.
“We had a former employee who said ‘Hey, this sort of stuff was going on,’” said Assistant Attorney General Jack Zurlini Jr. in Spokane. “When we dug into it, we found that it was a bit larger than even the former employee thought.”
Consumer complaints were few, given the small amount in question, he said. But it turned out that more than 1,700 customer accounts had their credits stripped.
Zurlini said the problem was limited to the company’s Spokane office, where a former branch manager was eliminating the credits. The branch serves a large swath of Eastern Washington, he said.
“He didn’t take it (the money) personally, it went into the company coffers,” Zurlini said. He wouldn’t comment on whether the matter was referred to local law enforcement.
In addition to the refund agreement, the company has also signed an “assurance of discontinuance” in which it promises to “adequately notify” customers that once they sign up, the service is ongoing until canceled. The company also agreed to immediately cancel service upon request.
Zurlini said that many customers across the state were confused about the continuous nature of the service. And some who tried to quit, he said, found it virtually impossible.
“In fact, we have a person here in our office who tried to cancel three times,” he said.
A TruGreen spokeswoman did not immediately return calls seeking comment, but in the agreement filed in Spokane County Superior Court Thursday, the company says “TruGreen denies having committed any violation of any law.”
Among the provisions of the document: that any future TruGreen ads or contracts will include a bold-faced statement like “Your service will continue year after year until you tell us to cancel it.”
Thursday’s agreement was not the first consumer tangle with the lawn-care company. In 2003, the Spokane-area Better Business Bureau said that TruGreen “generates more than twice the number of complaints as its nearest competitor.” The complaints were identical to the attorney general’s allegations: unauthorized services and difficulty in cancelling service. The company in recent years has also been slapped by attorneys general in Idaho and Oregon over allegedly calling people who have signed up for those states’ no-call lists, designed to foil telemarketers.
And last year, New Jeresey Attorney General Zulima Farber sued TruGreen after dozens of customers there complained. Among the allegations there: that the company performed lawn treatments not authorized by customers, charged people for “free” treatments and failed to honor customers’ requests to cancel service. Last summer, the company agreed to a settlement that included paying New Jersey $80,000 and agreeing to try to resolve more than 100 customer complaints.