MIKE POTTER LANDSCAPING & HARDSCAPING LLC

Do not sign the contract or give them any money until you read the fine print. Read the fine print until you understand every sentence and its implications. I have 20 complaints against this company. They all appear to be covered by the fine print. This implies that they had these problems in the past and they had to put all of this legal wording into the fine print in order to keep people from suing them. I had long talks with their contract writer about all the specific details of my landscaping project. We came to an understanding of what I wanted and how it was going to be done. In doing so, we came to several verbal agreements. The contract writer said he would personally pick out the tree. He did not. He said that he would help with locating the plants. He did not show up to help out. He promised brass caps for the sewer drain clean out pipes. That never came about. He said there would not be a problem with the river rocks or dirt and nothing about that I would have to pay extra to have them hauled away. He underestimated the amount of concrete needed for this job and I had to pay them $1000 for the additional amount of concrete. We talked about the irrigation system, how the PVC pipes would be routed, and that Potter’s would provide the same type of emitters as I presently have. This verbal understanding was not specified in detail in the contract. What we had agreed on was not delivered or installed. The contract was written very vaguely. I did not meet Mike Potter until the first morning of our landscaping project. Within 10 minutes of arriving, he starts an argument with us. Mike showed us aggressive intimidation every day. He often threatened us with walking off the job and not coming back unless we accept the work he was giving us. At the end of the third day, he demanded that we place the heavy potted plants on our steep slope by sunrise the next morning or he would leave and not come back. This is work we hired him to do and he made us do his work. Often he would drive his Bobcat aggressively and in the process he destroyed several of my plants that I was going to keep. When talking with his employees, they said that all of the above is his normal personality. The contract did not allow any money for hauling away the dirt and stones. I had to hire someone to remove a huge pile that was on the street in front of my house and clean up the street. The contract only provided 8 tons of gravel to cover my yard. I had to hire someone to bring in 20 more tons of gravel to cover the rest of the yard. The morning after they finished, the inferior irrigation system had a leak. I had to hire someone to replace the inferior irrigation system. I had to have my house repainted because they splattered concrete on the walls. They placed the sidewalk so high is acts like dam and keeps water from draining away from the house. Now the concrete is cracking. After we agreed on where to relocate the in-the-ground garbage can, Mike instructed his men to dig in a different location. By doing so, they broke the main water pipe to my house. He refused to repair it. I had to hire a plumber to repair it. That cost me $1200. The work for the back slope was very well documented in both words and drawings. Mike Potter gave us what he wanted not that what we wanted and this is one of the times where he said we either accept what he is giving us or he would leave and not come back. What he gave us is not acceptable. The nursery sent us unlabeled plants. His inexperience workers planted the bushes only part way into the ground leaving the top third of the root ball exposed. When they removed the old tree and bushes, they left the roots in the ground. Now I have the roots sprouting up new branches. They dumped river rock, gravel, and dirt all mixed together in the areas designated to be covered with just river rock. I had to clean all of those areas up. They did not dig the swell in the backyard. The location of the plants and the outline of the sidewalks needed to be mark. Instead of having us work with one of his employees, he demanded that we paint the locations. We are elderly people. This was just some of the physically exhausting work he demanded that we do. Because of the fine print in the contract, we paid them in full even though we are immensely dissatisfied with their inferior work. We have had to spend tens of thousands of dollars to fix the mess that Mike Potter Landscaping left us. “Read the fine print”.

The job got started poorly when the contractor set a Porta-Potty on my neighbors sidewalk directly in front of his house. Was immediately moved after my neighbor complained. Then the crew parked their vehicles on both sides of the street close to the delivered job material. Just moments after the crew left, a member of the fire department came to my door with a complaint that the space between the contractor vehicles and their material was not adequate to allow for emergency vehicles to pass. They said if that happened again, the contractor would be issued a citation. This being said, Pavers were installed without regard for keeping vertical and horizontal lines straight. Pavers were placed with what was called a random pattern, although I understand that a random pattern is a pattern that repeats based on interlocking the pavers. The quality of the job was poor. The fire pit was also constructed in a hurry and the top was 3/4" from flat, and gaps between the top and the block. The top was meant to be round, but was not. The street was left in a "mess" at the end of the day. I was frustrated and angry. I sent an email to the wife of the owner who immediately dispatched a crew to clean up the mess from the sand and concrete on the street. She also sent the crew back out to see if the pavers can be fixed, and I had an expert look at the job. He concluded that although the aesthetics of paver installation are far from perfect, the fact is that there were pavers installed. He suggested that I should have checked their work out before hiring them, and that his recommendation was to pay them if a price could not be negotiated lower. They came back to try to correct the workmanship on the fire pit. They improved it significantly, but the flagstone top is just barely acceptable because of the cutting process that was used, and the overhangs vary. I have many photos to share. I had another contractor come in to remove the pavers and re-install. That contractor did an excellent job. I wish I had gone with them originally. It was a $1,950 learning process (cost of re-install) plus all the frustration.

This company is punctual and gets work done in the timeframe promised. The work is just satisfactory (generous) as long as it is simple flat surfaces. Any curves, steps or lighting looks like a first timer. In our case, pavers were laid over existing concrete and soil areas. While the concrete was uneven to begin with, the curved areas are uneven and the step has significant slopes and is uneven - even where there was no pre-existing concrete. At the end of the job, we pointed out the uneven areas and asked if they could either be redone or the price adjusted for the poor quality of work. The owner immediately threaten to put a lien on my house if I did not accept the work and pay him. He was verbally abusive and refused to accept any responsibility for the quality of his own work. He was extremely unprofessional and his own crew was apologizing for his ridiculous behavior. I would not recommend hiring this company.

MIKES CREW SHOWED UP ON TIME WAS PROFESIONAL AND INSTALLED THE PROJECT ON TIME AND AS QUOTED. THEY CLEANED UP AND AFTER THE JOB WAS FINISHED THE WORK WAS TOP NOTCH.