We've been a landscaping as well as interior services sub-contractor for many years with USM. We were handling the landscaping and irrigation maintence for some Union Banks as well as many Walgreens & Learning Care Group. It was always hard to pay the landscapers a living wage because they expected weekly service and the monthly payout was less than $100 per week.
That's 4 services for less than 1 hundred dollars per service. Some of the properties were quite large and everything that was trimmed could not be disposed of on site, so our men had to take the trimmings with them and pay a dump fee to dispose of the trimmed vegetation.
We had done multiple repairs on a Union Bank location and had provided a lot of photos that profiled our repair work and we had received feedback from one of Union Bank's Facilities Managers. We lost our contract with the Union Bank accounts, along with Walgreens and the Learning Care Group sites. We were seeking payment for services rendered. Jay Hammond, Exterior services supervisor stated that there would be a $4000 debit to what our payout would be. That's when it got interesting.
I immediately started to investigate the issues found by the newly hired landscaper on the site. I asked USM numerous times where they got their $4000 figure from and I had requested a breakdown of the charges. I explained the importance and added that it was important to our records to breakdown the "charge back" in our accounting systems.
I emailed Jay several times and asked him for the details of the debit. He finally emailed by boss and stated that my email was 'un-called for'. I showed my boss the email and pointed out the numerous times I gave respect and recognition for his relevant experience. The email contained many thank you's and please's. Jay never pointed out why the email was un-called for and I immediately saw it as a ploy to stop asking for details because frankly I knew that he nor his team would be able to justify the price of the "debit", aka "charge back".
He NEVER gave me the info after I had requested it four times. I had "CC'd" his bosses and was about the only time that this man got stirred up, that I saw any movement.
The woman working under him, Jennifer Burger, Work Order Rep, was just as bad. As I worked with her through emails, I was professional, assertive and asked intelligent questions pertaining to work. She had conversions with my boss in how she felt insulted and of course I showed my boss the emails and asked "where/how does she feel insulted", she stated that she has a degree. Apparently , you have to have a bachelor's degree to be a work order rep, no landscaping experience or relevant field knowledge/experience neccessary. She was probably trained by her boss, to throw up a state of being offended when someone is trying to get to the bottom of things and she doesn't have an answer because they are a corrupt company.
I had sent Jay and Jennifer the work proposal for the Union Bank location for the breakdown on costs that we had charged them. They did mention that a drip line that was supposed to be installed by us was non-existant and we had to agree with them in the end. Our landscaper never installed the drip line for the plants on site and had told us that he had.
The cost of the drip line, which is small plastic hose and the corresponding labor was much less than $4000. I asked about the rest of the debit cost minus the drip line and labor and Jay was not at all interested in explaining this to me. It's not that he said as much, he simply did not respond to the emails and behaved as if I had never asked.
As well we worked with one Kevin Morgan and his supervisor Jess Johnson who handle Learning Care Group facilities in the US. The company owns La Petite Academy, Childtime and Tutor Time. Where we work the summer was very brutal and dry and to keep a lawn requires a lot of water. The people that run the facilities often turned off the sprinkler systems or set them to go off less than what was required of the grass. It's like a desert out here!
We took on a Tutor Time in which the site already had several large patches of grass. However after they hired a new landscaper to replace us, they indicated that they would be debiting us $4000 as well. The only thing they mentioned was some sod and its corresponding labor costs. So like with Jay Hammond, I started asking Jess Johnson for a breakdown in costs. I emailed her a link of a local company's website that showed the costs of sod in the area which is approx. $0.55 per square foot. I added in a healthy labor cost of $35 per hour times 2 workers for 16 hours and shot that figure back to her.
I had asked her to bring the figure back down to earth because obviously it was in the clouds, to my surprise, no response. She won't answer her phone and she won't go into detail about the debit. She's being evasive. It's because THEY DON'T HAVE AN ANSWER! There's no legal way they are in the right, so they know best to stay silent. Of course Jess and her subordinate Kevin Morgan also have felt offended several times when I elaborate on the situation at hand and ask clear questions to subject matter pertaining to work on the sites. They voiced their outrage to my boss who as in previous times viewed my email exchanges, not once did he agree with them, nor did they ever give any specifics to their various gripes. It's a pattern observed as part of how USM works and how they handle some truth when it's thrown at them. Act hurt and offended, it's not unlike many other areas of corporate America and even the US government, no big surprise.
We basically are being robbed at this point and it seems futile to continue on with our interior service accounts because all our labor will go to the large debit, which at this point overshadows the total amount rightfully owed to us by USM.
In general, in our observations, USM underbids job sites at almost every turn, no probably EVERY turn. Rarely, maybe never, can you factor in man hours, because it will be below minimum wage, they've taken advantage in a loop hole in America where the job is priced instead of the hours, it shouldn't be legal.
The solution is quite simple. Not one sub-contractor accept work from them and they will fall OR they will pay what they should for jobs. Because as long as someone out there says "yes", they will survive in their current state. I have said that their job is simply to get 'someone' to say 'yes'. That's it, you do all the work, they get their cut, you have your own liability insurance and so on, it's not on them. They of course charge their own fees for each and every service and they make their profits.
After you pay your hefty insurance bills, pay out your workers, the profit margin 9/10 times is nothing good. the 1/10 times is when you win proposals for special services but as you can see, if you have problems with them on a site, they can drop you instantaneously and claim that you never did any work to begin with. They don't feel they need to justify it and until legal action steps in, who's to make them?
You work for this company, CAREFULLY read the 'Terms & Conditions' for EACH and EVERY work order you do. We failed to do this. One work order that we completed was for planting plants on a site. Due to the heat and the lack of maturity of the plants they died later. We were charged for it. Of course the 'Terms & Conditions of EVERY work order did NOT specify a 12-month warranty yet this one did, and once I figured that out, there was nothing we could do about it, we had signed it.
USM Services Reviews
We've been a landscaping as well as interior services sub-contractor for many years with USM. We were handling the landscaping and irrigation maintence for some Union Banks as well as many Walgreens & Learning Care Group. It was always hard to pay the landscapers a living wage because they expected weekly service and the monthly payout was less than $100 per week.
That's 4 services for less than 1 hundred dollars per service. Some of the properties were quite large and everything that was trimmed could not be disposed of on site, so our men had to take the trimmings with them and pay a dump fee to dispose of the trimmed vegetation.
We had done multiple repairs on a Union Bank location and had provided a lot of photos that profiled our repair work and we had received feedback from one of Union Bank's Facilities Managers. We lost our contract with the Union Bank accounts, along with Walgreens and the Learning Care Group sites. We were seeking payment for services rendered. Jay Hammond, Exterior services supervisor stated that there would be a $4000 debit to what our payout would be. That's when it got interesting.
I immediately started to investigate the issues found by the newly hired landscaper on the site. I asked USM numerous times where they got their $4000 figure from and I had requested a breakdown of the charges. I explained the importance and added that it was important to our records to breakdown the "charge back" in our accounting systems.
I emailed Jay several times and asked him for the details of the debit. He finally emailed by boss and stated that my email was 'un-called for'. I showed my boss the email and pointed out the numerous times I gave respect and recognition for his relevant experience. The email contained many thank you's and please's. Jay never pointed out why the email was un-called for and I immediately saw it as a ploy to stop asking for details because frankly I knew that he nor his team would be able to justify the price of the "debit", aka "charge back".
He NEVER gave me the info after I had requested it four times. I had "CC'd" his bosses and was about the only time that this man got stirred up, that I saw any movement.
The woman working under him, Jennifer Burger, Work Order Rep, was just as bad. As I worked with her through emails, I was professional, assertive and asked intelligent questions pertaining to work. She had conversions with my boss in how she felt insulted and of course I showed my boss the emails and asked "where/how does she feel insulted", she stated that she has a degree. Apparently , you have to have a bachelor's degree to be a work order rep, no landscaping experience or relevant field knowledge/experience neccessary. She was probably trained by her boss, to throw up a state of being offended when someone is trying to get to the bottom of things and she doesn't have an answer because they are a corrupt company.
I had sent Jay and Jennifer the work proposal for the Union Bank location for the breakdown on costs that we had charged them. They did mention that a drip line that was supposed to be installed by us was non-existant and we had to agree with them in the end. Our landscaper never installed the drip line for the plants on site and had told us that he had.
The cost of the drip line, which is small plastic hose and the corresponding labor was much less than $4000. I asked about the rest of the debit cost minus the drip line and labor and Jay was not at all interested in explaining this to me. It's not that he said as much, he simply did not respond to the emails and behaved as if I had never asked.
As well we worked with one Kevin Morgan and his supervisor Jess Johnson who handle Learning Care Group facilities in the US. The company owns La Petite Academy, Childtime and Tutor Time. Where we work the summer was very brutal and dry and to keep a lawn requires a lot of water. The people that run the facilities often turned off the sprinkler systems or set them to go off less than what was required of the grass. It's like a desert out here!
We took on a Tutor Time in which the site already had several large patches of grass. However after they hired a new landscaper to replace us, they indicated that they would be debiting us $4000 as well. The only thing they mentioned was some sod and its corresponding labor costs. So like with Jay Hammond, I started asking Jess Johnson for a breakdown in costs. I emailed her a link of a local company's website that showed the costs of sod in the area which is approx. $0.55 per square foot. I added in a healthy labor cost of $35 per hour times 2 workers for 16 hours and shot that figure back to her.
I had asked her to bring the figure back down to earth because obviously it was in the clouds, to my surprise, no response. She won't answer her phone and she won't go into detail about the debit. She's being evasive. It's because THEY DON'T HAVE AN ANSWER! There's no legal way they are in the right, so they know best to stay silent. Of course Jess and her subordinate Kevin Morgan also have felt offended several times when I elaborate on the situation at hand and ask clear questions to subject matter pertaining to work on the sites. They voiced their outrage to my boss who as in previous times viewed my email exchanges, not once did he agree with them, nor did they ever give any specifics to their various gripes. It's a pattern observed as part of how USM works and how they handle some truth when it's thrown at them. Act hurt and offended, it's not unlike many other areas of corporate America and even the US government, no big surprise.
We basically are being robbed at this point and it seems futile to continue on with our interior service accounts because all our labor will go to the large debit, which at this point overshadows the total amount rightfully owed to us by USM.
In general, in our observations, USM underbids job sites at almost every turn, no probably EVERY turn. Rarely, maybe never, can you factor in man hours, because it will be below minimum wage, they've taken advantage in a loop hole in America where the job is priced instead of the hours, it shouldn't be legal.
The solution is quite simple. Not one sub-contractor accept work from them and they will fall OR they will pay what they should for jobs. Because as long as someone out there says "yes", they will survive in their current state. I have said that their job is simply to get 'someone' to say 'yes'. That's it, you do all the work, they get their cut, you have your own liability insurance and so on, it's not on them. They of course charge their own fees for each and every service and they make their profits.
After you pay your hefty insurance bills, pay out your workers, the profit margin 9/10 times is nothing good. the 1/10 times is when you win proposals for special services but as you can see, if you have problems with them on a site, they can drop you instantaneously and claim that you never did any work to begin with. They don't feel they need to justify it and until legal action steps in, who's to make them?
You work for this company, CAREFULLY read the 'Terms & Conditions' for EACH and EVERY work order you do. We failed to do this. One work order that we completed was for planting plants on a site. Due to the heat and the lack of maturity of the plants they died later. We were charged for it. Of course the 'Terms & Conditions of EVERY work order did NOT specify a 12-month warranty yet this one did, and once I figured that out, there was nothing we could do about it, we had signed it.
Beware of USM. It's not worth it.