Gardeners Falconwood Complaints Procedure

This Complaints Procedure explains how Gardeners Falconwood manages and resolves complaints about our gardening and grounds maintenance services. Our aim is to provide clear steps so that any concerns are handled fairly, consistently and as quickly as possible.

Our commitment to resolving complaints

We take all feedback seriously, including complaints. Complaints help us identify areas where we can improve our lawn care, planting, landscaping, and garden maintenance services. We will always aim to:

Listen carefully to your concerns

Treat you with respect and courtesy

Investigate what happened in a fair and impartial way

Offer a clear explanation and, where appropriate, a practical solution

Use your feedback to improve our services for the future

What this procedure covers

This procedure covers complaints about the services provided by Gardeners Falconwood, including but not limited to regular garden maintenance, one off clearances, hedge and tree work within our remit, planting projects, turfing, and general soft landscaping.

A complaint is any expression of dissatisfaction about the standard of our work, how we delivered our services, the conduct of our gardeners or administrative team, or how we have handled a previous concern.

This procedure does not cover matters that are solely about requests for new work, quotations, or routine scheduling queries. These will be handled through our normal customer service processes.

How to make a complaint

You can raise a complaint verbally or in writing. You may prefer to speak to us initially to explain the issue, especially if it relates to work that has just been carried out in your garden. You can also write to us setting out the details of your complaint.

When making a complaint, please provide as much information as you can, including:

Your name and the address where the gardening work was carried out

The date or approximate date of the work or incident

A clear description of what went wrong or what you are unhappy about

What you would like us to do to put things right, where this is relevant

Any supporting information, such as photographs or job references, if available

Stage 1: Informal resolution

In many cases, complaints can be resolved quickly and informally. If you raise a concern while our gardeners are on site, they will do their best to resolve the issue straight away where it is safe and reasonable to do so. If this is not possible, the matter will be passed to a supervisor or manager for review.

For complaints made shortly after a visit, we will normally try to contact you within a reasonable time to clarify the issue and agree the next steps. This may include arranging a revisit to inspect the work, adjusting future maintenance tasks, or undertaking remedial work where appropriate.

Stage 2: Formal complaint investigation

If your complaint cannot be resolved informally, or if you prefer to make a formal complaint, it will be logged and passed to a manager for investigation.

We will aim to:

Acknowledge your complaint within a reasonable period

Review the details of your complaint and any supporting information

Check job records, schedules and notes made by our gardeners

Arrange a site visit if necessary to inspect the garden or outdoor space

Speak with any team members involved in the work

Once we have completed our investigation, we will provide a response setting out:

What we have understood your complaint to be about

What we have found during our investigation

Any factors that may have contributed to the issue

Our decision and the reasons for it

Any steps we propose to put things right, where appropriate

Possible outcomes and remedies

Where a complaint is upheld in full or in part, we will consider appropriate remedies. These may include:

Providing additional or remedial gardening work at no extra charge, for example re cutting a lawn, reshaping a hedge, or replanting agreed areas where suitable

Adjusting future work plans to better reflect your preferences or the needs of your garden

Providing advice on how to maintain plants or lawns where external factors such as weather or pests have contributed to the problem

Offering a goodwill gesture where we consider it appropriate to do so

Where we do not uphold a complaint, we will explain our reasons clearly and provide any relevant information that has informed our decision.

If you remain dissatisfied

If you are not satisfied with our formal response, you can ask for a further review. In doing so, please explain why you are unhappy with the outcome and whether you have any additional information you would like us to consider.

A more senior member of our team will review the handling of your complaint and the decision reached. This may include a further visit to your property, where appropriate, to consider any outstanding concerns.

After this review, we will confirm our final position on your complaint and any steps we will take. Once our final response has been issued, we may not be able to reconsider the same issues unless new and significant information becomes available.

Timescales and communication

We aim to deal with complaints as promptly as is reasonable. Response times may depend on factors such as seasonal workload, the need for site visits, and the complexity of the issues raised. If we believe it will take longer than usual to complete our investigation, we will aim to let you know and keep you updated.

We will normally respond to complaints using the same communication method you used to contact us, unless you request otherwise and we are reasonably able to accommodate your preference.

Record keeping and learning from complaints

We keep a record of complaints and how they have been resolved. This helps us to identify patterns, improve the quality of our gardening services and staff training, and ensure that similar issues are less likely to occur in the future.

By following this Complaints Procedure, Gardeners Falconwood aims to provide a clear, fair and accessible way for customers to raise concerns and to have confidence that they will be listened to and addressed properly.