Preferred Lanscapes Design and Planning LLC

Two of the french drains that were installed by Jeff had been improperly installed and were created large sinkholes in our side yards. The drain fields were insuficient in size and the soil had not been properly watered in to allow the soil/sand to settle. In the months that followed the project large holes developed in both side drain fields and when heavy rains would come the water was being forced back up to the surface and flooding and wahing out the surrounding areas. We had a different Irrigation specialist come out. He told us that it would be too costly to dig up and replace the field with the proper size and stone that we needed to accomodate the space and recomended that we run 4" pipe down the side yard instead to the rear retention pond behind the house. this is the cost reflected in this review.

the work began two weeks before Christmas and I was told that it would be completed by the end of the month, it took and additional two and a half weeks before it was complete some of this was due to the additions and weather but by the end I felt as if we were being squeezed inbetween other job sights that were taking priority. The major issue with any contract work is communication and this project was no exception. From the begining I attempted to provide detailed information on what I was looking to have done so there would be little missunderstanding between Jeff and myself. this was not to be the case, I quickly came to the realization that I was going to have to oversee every step of the process to make sure details were understood and short cuts were kept to a minimum. In the end I still dont know whether Jeff simply does not listen to the client or is unable to process the information accordingly or that he listens and then procedes to do what he believes will save him time and money hoping the client won't notice the difference. I mean no disrespect to Jeff he is a very nice person and we were able to work out the situations as they presented themselves but this back and forth between the two of us was constant throughout the entire project and greatly diminished the overall experience. That's the bad end of the spectrum the good news is that the landscape and hardscape have dramatically improved the overall appearance of the property, the palms Jeff selected for the project are beautiful specimens and overall I am pleased with the end result. Lee who acted as foreman for Jeff's team is a very proffesional and competent young man and a pleasure to work with. I posted that I would not hire this company again, to be clear this decission is not a direct reflection of Jeff and his team but my belief that money could be saved by acting as a general contractor myself. If you are inclined to sit back and let someone else handle the work and not worry about the details I think Prefered Landscaping would be a good fit, if however you are inclined to watch the details and expect them to be adheared to then I would suggest looking into being the general contractor yourself and hire individual companys to do the work.

Painted fountain came out fine. Stained fountain came out terrible. The company's expertise is apparently only in painting fountains, although they represented they knew how to stain also. However, the company is clearly not qualified to stain fountains. They also attempted to stain a fountain that had defects that precluded the staining from being effective, yet did not advise me that these defects existed or would adversely impact the stain job. Finally, the bill was rendered for an amount that was higher than the amount that was agreed upon at the beginning of the job, and included line items for reimbursement of expenses for materials that were well in excess of the actual costs of the materials, and materials were supposed to have been included in the original price.