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Oh boy....Where do I begin. I was a Symbiot partner for 4 years, but I will say that I did not perform any sub work for them. I mostly used there buying power through what they call there P3 program. If you are a fert and squirt company and are smaller in size, you will benefit huge from the pricing you will get for product through Lesco/John Deere. They have other vendors that you can benefit from as well and get good pricing on equipment, lease options, etc... This aspect of Symbiot was worth the $700? per year that pay in dues. That is the good part!
Now the bad Part (IMO)! I was asked to perform bids on national contracts on more then a couple occasions and did not get any. That did not bother me as much as the fact that I had to call and get the results months later, even after they insisted that you turn there bids around in a week or less sometimes. Then there was the infamous snow contracts that bankrupted a portion of there business and many of there subs. There were a large number of snow subs that were not paid millions of dollars for work performed through there snow contracts with Symbiot. Symbiot was paid by the customers, but for some reason the subs were not paid, and if they were paid anything, it was pennies on the dollars owed. I know that some of the payment issues did fall on landscape related services as well, but I do not know the extent.
I will end with this, the information above is information gathered off of articles and networking with other companies involved. I chose to not renew my membership two years ago because of what they did to the snow contractors out of principle. I did not want to be affiliated with a company that conducts business that way, no matter what the benefit I was receiving.
If I were you, I would ask them for some references that have been with them for over 3 years and ask some questions. I would specifically ask for references that have performed both landscape and snow related services and see what they say. Like I said earlier, if you are joining for buying power, on paper it is a good investment. But that is the only positive statement I have to say about that organization.
I hope there are others on here that have had a better experience, I would enjoy hearing something positive about the change in there practices.
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Matt
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