So I mow my own very small lawn in NJ. After being plagued last year with every weed possible in nj i hired one of those companies that does fertilizer and stuff. They spent the whole year here, and I would give them a solid b or b plus. Few weeds, lawn looked good from the street.
After the summer, they offered to aerate and power seed. I paid them 150 to do this. My wife said they were here for 10 minutes. I had warned the company about some trouble spots, where I wanted them to give some tender loving care to, and those were ignored. I figured to wait and see what it looked like, and in 6 weeks there was some new grass in the lawn but little in the trouble spots.
I called and complained and they responded by sending a guy over who reseeded the lawn, in November. In some spots, the seed appears to be dumped in piles as if to make it obvious that they put seed down.
I turned my sprinklers off 3 weeks ago, there is no way any of this new seed will grow this year. Was I cheated? How do I respond? They were paid by credit card.
The seed should come up in the spring - wintertime is actually not a bad time to overseed; the seed works it’s way into the soil over the winter and then sprouts when the ground warms up in the spring. However, if the company puts down a crabgrass preventer in the spring it will also keep the grass seed from coming up along with the crabgrass.
Also, if the didn’t put down starter fertilizer the first time they seeded that may be why not much came up.
Aeration is a good long term effort and worth probably half of what you paid, depending on your size of lawn.
They must have simply spread seed. That won’t do much of anything… Maybe 5-10% germination. It sounds like there was a disconnect in your expectations and their explanation of what was done.
They don’t sound like they are ripping you off if they came back when you called.
I hired a lawn service too, and they do a great job, but every fall (October) I rent a slice seeder and buy high quality seed from a local nursery. I pay $120 for the seed and $80 for the slicer (sometimes split with my neighbor). I over seed the yard and then put leafgrow over top. It works great. I spend around $250 and have the best lawn on the street.
The lawn co offers to do the same service for over $1000.