More vulnerable elderly have come forward to WOOPs staff about recent lawn mowing scams. Wairarapa organisation for older persons (WOOPs) co-ordinator Diane Chapman said a Masterton and Martinborough resident had contacted her office with similar stories after a Times-Age article on Saturday. "A Masterton woman rang saying three Samoan men with twotrucks and a car had come to her house around November 6." The men quoted the elderly woman a price of $600 to trim some shrubs, to which the woman told them "to take a running leap". In Martinborough several men had parked on the roadside while one of them walked up a long driveway to an elderly woman's home. "She told me that the guy had said her trees needed trimming and when she said she didn't want the work done they became quite pushy." She managed to get rid of the men and thought they had parked down the long driveway so their vehicles couldn't be identified, she said. This comes after a Masterton woman was quoted $2000 two weeks ago, by three Porirua men, to get her lawns mowed and some weeding done. The regional franchise owner of Jim's Mowing, Gavin McGlashan, said he has 45 men working under him across the board. An average size lawn cost between $25 and $45 to be mowed. A really big cut would be $100 and that would only be if you were going around trees and gardens and trampolines and swings." Mr McGlashan said he had just quoted some tenants $120 to have three small gardens with foot-high grass removed and three small lawn sections mowed. "If anyone is being charged more than a couple of hundred dollars then it would have to be a really significant amount of work being done like tree pulling and re-establishing gardens."
