landscaper and pool

Me again. I'm going to try to make this very short and I'm attempting to be impartial.

1. One of our landscaper's work crews has been 'improvising' access into the pool area by jimmying the gate. For whatever reason, work crew didn't have a key fob for access. One work crewmember arranged to meet a friend (in truth, a homeless person) at the pool, jimmyed the gate open for them (plus two of their friends and a dog).

2. One of our landscaper's techs stopped by the pool to use the bathroom. They couldn't get in, attempted to diddle the lock with a key they found in one of the pool lockboxes and unknowingly munged the gate so no-one could get into the pool for 51 hours. Residents were unhappy.

Landscaper's attitude is that this is all SOP. Opinions?

Bill

Get their attention by saying going to be contacting their insurance carrier. They should be licensed and insured. The damage they did with proof could be an insurance claim for the HOA to claim on the landscapers insurance. File it under "Damages". Although the damages probably won't equal their deductible. This should give them a bit more awareness and concern of what they do.

BTW: This reminds me of the time I forgot to get up in time to unlock the pool gates. We let the lawncare use the bathrooms at the clubhouse. Apparently a worker decided to go pee in someone's backyard. Did not know the owner was home. They walked out their door to see them peeing in their yard! I got an earful about that for a long time...

My bad: “Standard Operating Procedure”.

Bill

Thanks all. Yeah, I had some sense that I was being snowed. This could turn into a very big deal, though, so I appreciate getting other opinions.

You asked if I had witnesses? Actually what I have is video. It’s pretty damning - but the owner of the landscaping company is sorta doing the “I’m not sure I understand …” thing{1}.

I’m really not too upset about the first incident, where the fellow let the homeless people into the pool area - the dog never made it to water, so there was minimal mess to clean up. I had to go up to the pool and chase them out - but it wasn’t a terrible thing for me to get up off my ass and do something physical.

The second incident, where the guy accidentally shut down the pool for two days … I’m pretty ticked off about that. Accidents happen. But it took most of the two days just figuring out who this guy was. And yeah, we had to pay to get someone out to fix the issue. I don’t yet know what that will cost, but the landscaper has graciously said *nothing* about paying the bill so far. Plus I was told this fellow stopped in to use the restroom. Say what? I’ll check the contract, but I don’t think it says anything about “landscape company employees shall have access to all facilities” … really, I don’t have a major issue with *that*, either … what gets me is that I’m fairly sure I’m being lied to: video shows thIs guy arrives in his truck at 10:30am, gets out of truck at 10:40am, messes with the gate from 10:50am to 11am, doesn’t get in, then he disappears for 40 minutes until he gets in his truck and leaves at 11:40am. The timing is kinda weird for a bathroom break. I haven’t really tried very hard to figure out what he was doing during the gap times. If I see the guy squatting against the pool fence … the Internet has shown us again and again that there are things it is best not to see, as they can never be un-seen.

The last I heard from the landscaper was something about how the fellow was there checking on “things”. I replied “I’m not sure what to tell the residents who have asked me *why* the pool was locked up for two days.” And BTW, residents *have* been asking me about that.

Just how much of a hassle is it to change landscaping companies?

Tim, thanks for the advice about not withholding the repair cost. I don’t believe we would tend to do that, but it’s good to know about it just-in-case.

Bill

[1} long ago, when I was in college, I learned that if people don’t wanna believe something, they won’t. Imagine the apostle Thomas in the Bible saying “holes? I don’t see any holes! Your hands are fine, Jesus!” The Bible tells a different story. But I’m … skeptical.

When does the landscaping contract end? Either way One you put the landscaping company on 30 days notice to shape up or they're DONE.
Second you have that worker trespassed from your HOA.

Nobody could get into the pool area.

Okay, that’s perhaps overstating it: nobody could get into the pool area unless they climbed the fence. Which - especially of late, with our trespassing issues - is not something we want to encourage.

(The gate has a latch that normally allows the gate to open when someone badges in with a proper pool key fob. This fellow had a key (that we didn’t even know existed; file under “legacy hardware, complications of”) that simply put the latch in ”locked” state, ignoring any signals from the key fob system. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that a) we now know that the gate can be locked in this manner, and b) it requires this key and it’s not something that any rando with a screwdriver can do to us).

Bill