ROSCOE, Ill. -- Jason Rogers thought the deal sounded too good to be true: a guy offering to grade, sod and seed lawns at half the cost as other landscaping companies.
So he passed on it until a couple weeks later, when he saw the guy in the ad, Ryan Endres, working on his neighbor's yard. Rogers strolled over, and after chatting with Endres, hired him to grade and sod his own yard.
Rogers said he gave Endres $400 in cash as a down payment on the $2,000 job and received a handwritten receipt. Endres took the money and never worked an hour, according to Rogers.
Rogers said he called Endres repeatedly for six weeks before hiring someone else to fix his yard.
His neighbor, Troy Stoffregen, said he had similar problems. Stoffregen wrote Endres a $1,000 check April 24 as a down payment on the $2,000 worth of grading, fertilizing and sodding Endres agreed to do. Endres cashed the check, and, according to Stoffregen, pushed some dirt around in his yard and never returned.
Stoffregen has filed a civil suit against Endres, and Rogers is checking into what legal action he can take.
"It's frustrating because it's his word against yours about what he did," Rogers said.
Endres said he did work on both lawns -- including getting Stoffregen's "99 percent done" -- but inclement weather limited how much work he could do. He said he offered to fix the yards later, but the two men refused to let him finish the job.
Endres said he hasn't been notified of the suit and said Stoffregen and Rogers are the rare people dissatisfied with his work.
"They've taken this way out of proportion," Endres said. "They don't understand that when it's too wet, you can't do anything. I do a good job, and if someone isn't satisfied with a job, all they have to do is call."
The disagreements are similar to other consumer disputes, particularly when services are involved.
The Illinois attorney general's office receives an estimated 24,000 calls a year from consumers claiming they have been defrauded by service contractors. Construction and home-improvement fraud last year ranked second on the list of top consumer complaints and have ranked in the top three for eight of the past 10 years.
Basic research before handing over a check can prevent most consumer headaches, the attorney general's office says.
In hindsight, Rogers and Stoffregen say they should have at least considered other lawn companies. They said they chose Endres because he was cheap and immediately available.
Another Rockford resident, Mike Wilson, said he hired Endres in late March to grade, seed and straw his yard for $600. Wilson was unsatisfied with the yard and said he could not reach Endres to have him fix the problem. Wilson said he is filing a civil suit against Endres.
Both Wilson and Stoffregen are finishing their yards themselves.
Endres said he doesn't remember working on Wilson's lawn. And his prices aren't indicative of his work, he said, rather they allow his 4-year-old business to compete with more established companies.
"Some people are satisfied, and some aren't," said Endres, who owns Ryan's Lawn and Landscaping in South Beloit. "It's just part of the business. The ones who aren't, you just can't satisfy."
Landscape contractors are not required to be licensed in Illinois and are not regulated by the state Department of Professional Regulation, said spokesman Doug Seymour.
His office directs consumers to the state attorney general's office, where they can file complaints, but the attorney general is prohibited from representing citizens privately. Consumers typically are directed to file civil cases to recover any losses.
Lance Raphael, a lawyer with the Consumer Advocacy Center in Chicago, said consumers increasingly turn to his office for advice as it becomes more difficult for them to seek legal recourse for fraud. At any given time, his office has 100 to 120 cases on file.
"What most commonly screws people over in the consumer arena is more general things like car contracts and deals with credit card companies," Raphael said. "Right now, there is a frightening trend going on with arbitration taking away people's rights to seek recourse for being defrauded."