Gardening expert Marie Staunton has warned households of pretend gardeners looking to scam ‘unbelievable amounts of money’ after they targeted her own parents
kilmurrynursery / Instagram(Image: kilmurrynursery / Instagram)
Gardening expert Marie Staunton has released a video warning households of fake gardeners who scammed her own parents out of money.
“On Wednesday, my parents let these guys come into the house, under the pretence to do the garden, and they were ripped off for a very sizeable amount of money.”
After doing no work, apart from trimming two shrubs, they left her parents’ garden after an hour and a half, claiming there was a rats’ nest at the back of the garden that they had sprayed, where they would be back the next day for the rest of the money and to take their stuff away.
“So I went out at half past twelve yesterday to wait in the front garden for them to arrive. This guy arrives, walks up the road, and starts to go into the house, and I stop him, and I said, ‘Can I help you?'”
The man then said that he and the van behind him were going to take stuff out of the garden, to which Marie responded: “You did nothing yesterday, what are you going to be taking out of the garden?”
“Well, I have to get some more money”, said the man, to which Marie replied, “You’re getting no more money here.”
She then recorded the man on her phone as he left the premises.
“He walked down the road where there was a car waiting for him, so they were never going to be doing anything.”
Marie detailed that the van reversed at high speed, to the point that it could have posed a danger to any children in the area.
“A lovely guy, a college kid named Lucas, he came around the corner and followed him, and I followed the car just to make sure if they met up, I just needed the redge of the car.”, as Maria already has the registration of the truck thanks to her neighbour.
“I wouldn’t have known nothing about this had my neighbour next door to my mother hadn’t alerted me to the fact that there was something going on.”
“So, tell your parents or your grandparents not to open the door to people cold-calling, saying they’re going to be doing whatever they’re going to be doing in the garden. It’s unbelievable the amount of cash they got off my parents.”
“If you want to DM me, I will give you the name of the company, complete gougers, absolute gougers.”
Marie intends to have the matter dealt with by An Garda Síochána. She also says she had to take care of her mother, who was having chest pains over the incident.
Marie captioned the video by saying: “Be aware of cold callers coming to your door pretending to be gardeners or arborists with fake flyers, dressed in all the gear looking the part. They are getting enormous amount of cash from unsuspecting older parents and grand parents.”
Want to see more of the stories you love from RSVP? To add RSVP as a preferred source of news on Google, simply click here
