On May 17, 3:03 pm, Ignoramus30426 ignoramus30...@NOSPAM.
30426.invalid wrote:
On 17 May 2007 11:47:45 -0700, New Leaf wrote:

These guys had cashed my check in the 10 minutes it took to call my
bank and put a stop on it. The person at the bank (back when you knew
people in your individual branch and didn't call a 1-800 number) told
me how sorry they were and that I wasn't the first person that day who
had been scammed. My neighbour's husband came home and said, "How
stupid were you that you hadn't heard of mulch scammers?!?!?" Well,
gee, pretty stupid I guess.

Viv, I never heard of mulch scammers either. Do you know what they do
specifically? Leave "free mulch" with radioactive contamination? Hide
cameras in mulch? Dump mulch without asking and demand payment for
removal?

i

LOL! All of the above, practically.

Basically, this is how it goes. In Memphis, if you want any sort of
annuals to stay alive in your garden over the summer, you need to
mulch heavily. The combination of bad clay soil and hot weather kills
anything off otherwise. I was actually contemplating a run to the
garden centre to buy some mulch for the front flower beds when these
guys knocked on the door. They had a pickup truck half full of mulch.
The guy had a basket and showed me the quality and said they were just
heading back to Mississippi after a landscaping job and did I need
some mulch? Memphis is right next to the Tennessee/Mississippi border,
and a lot of landscaping companies come over to do jobs during the
day, so this all sounded above-board.

I asked how much. He said 15 baskets would cover the two front beds. I
asked how much per basket. He said, "$5 a bushel." I calculated that
out and it was about $20 more than I'd have to pay by the bag at the
garden centre, but that would have required two trips with two
toddlers in car seats plus they were going to spread it. I agreed.

They did the job quickly, spread the mulch neatly, cleaned up the
sidewalks, and came to the door. I had $80 ready, $75 plus a $5 tip.
The big guy said, "That will be $375." ?!?!?!?!?!?!? I said, "No you
told me $5 a basket and you'd need 15 baskets to cover it." He said,
"Well ma'am, these are 5 bushel baskets." Now I thought that a bushel
basket held about the same as 10 gallons. I remembered learning that
in school. I said that the basket he showed me was a bushel basket. He
put a foot in the door and said "Don't tell me my business. This is a
5 bushel basket." That's when he gave me the line about knowing where
I lived. I wrote a cheque and they took off fast.

When I went out to check it closer, the mulch was so bad I had to pull
it off. It definitely wasn't the good stuff he'd shown me in the
basket. If you use cedar as mulch, it needs to sit for a while so it
stops "cooking" and also because it is quite acidic, and that has to
be washed out. You can't just put cedar through a woodchipper and use
it as mulch. To make this fresh stuff look aged, they had mixed in oil
of some sort.

Viv