Who should not hire Northline.

Every business page on the internet tells you who it is for. Almost none of them tell you who it is not for, which is strange, because the fastest way to waste your afternoon is to get a quote from somebody who was never going to be right for the property.

So here is the list, and it is not false modesty. Each of these is a real reason to go somewhere else.

You want somebody at the door this afternoon

We quote most properties from the map and we reply the same day, but the first service visit is scheduled rather than immediate, and in a storm the route runs in a published order that we do not break for a new customer. If you need somebody there in two hours, call an operator with a vehicle sitting idle waiting for the phone to ring. We do not keep one waiting.

You want a large crew and a project manager

The person who quotes your property is the person who does the work and the person who answers the phone. On most residential properties that is the whole point. On a large commercial site with several buildings and a hard opening time, it can be a limitation, and if it is, say so and we will tell you honestly whether to go elsewhere.

Your laneway is over 400 feet, outside the towns we reach

A laneway over 400 ft adds $200 for every further 100 ft, which is published as a formula precisely so nobody wastes a visit finding out. Past a certain length, outside Oshawa, Whitby, Ajax, Pickering, Bowmanville, Courtice, Newcastle and the Clarington hamlets, the drive time stops making sense for either of us and the honest answer is a contractor based closer to you.

You want the cheapest number in the street

We are not the cheapest and we are not trying to be. $129, $189 and $279 a month plus HST are the published prices, they are never discounted on the tier, and the only two ways they come down are prepaying the year and sending a neighbour. If the decision is going to be made purely on price, somebody will always beat us, usually by not being insured.

You want salting on the cheapest plan

There is no salting on Silver, ever. It is in writing in four places on this site because it is the single most likely thing to be assumed. If you want salt without asking for it, that is Platinum, and if you want it sometimes, that is Gold.

You want a guaranteed clearing time rather than a target

We publish targets, 6:30 AM on Platinum and 7 AM on Gold after overnight snow, and we say plainly that they are targets. Somebody will offer you a guarantee. Ask them what happens when they miss it, and ask them to put the answer in the contract.

You have a tree over ladder height, irrigation to repair, or sod to lay

Not offered, and referred out rather than attempted. Tree work above ladder height, irrigation repair, hardscaping, sod and grading are all jobs somebody else does better than we would.

And who it is for

Somebody who wants one company, one payment and one person to telephone; who would rather have a published trigger depth and a published season than a sales pitch; and who values not thinking about it from November to May more than they value saving forty dollars a month. If that is you, send the address.