3D Landscape

The short: Very poor customer service, didn't respond to phone calls, didn't show up when they said they would, after much persistence on my part, they showed up but didn't do the job that was promised and did a very poor job at what they did, leaving the yard a mess. The long, drawn out, story of frustration: 3-D landscape company ran a discount deal through Amazonlocal, $35 for one hour of spring yard clean up. I purchased one for my residence and a second for our rental. I called the same day to schedule service and was told the owner would call back soon to schedule service. 1.5 weeks and many phone calls later, I finally got the owner to call me back, at which time he told me he'd come look around the properties in a few days, then would schedule a time to complete the service, but they were booked a couple weeks out due to high response to the discount. This was the excuse I ended up hearing many times over the next couple of weeks. When I did meet with Kirk, the owner, he was personable and seemed knowledgable. We spoke in detail about which plants/shrubs to trim and how it was to be done, but he did not take notes. He told me the properties would both be done the next week (this was on a Thursday), that he'd get the schedule done in the next couple of days and call me, and that he'd be emailing me an estimate of other work (fertilizing, replacing bark with rocks). He knew that I needed to give our renter 24 hours notice, and assured me that this was no problem as he dealt with lots of landlords and property management companies. By the next Monday, I had not received a call or email, so I called Kirk and left a voice mail, asking when our service would be scheduled and again requesting a quote on fertilizing, as he knew we had somebody else lined up to do it that would need to be canceled. Wednesday... still no call so I left another message. Thursday we had a different company fertilize the yard, as we had not heard back from 3-D. On Friday, I called yet again. I finally made contact with the owner's wife. I told her to make sure they didn't fertilize the yard and asked when we were scheduled, as we had an event in our yard that weekend. She called Kirk, then called me back and assured me the house would be completed on Saturday, though she wasn't sure what time. I asked if the crew would know what Kirk and I had discussed and she said the only note said, "trim front and back bushes." She also let me know the work at the rental house had already been completed (I didn't know, and thus hadn't given the renter appropriate 24 hour notice which is a stipulation of the lease). On Saturday, by 3:50 PM, nobody had arrived. My husband called and spoke to Cristy. She agreed that they were supposed to have come and said she'd call Kirk to find out if/when they'd still arrive, then she'd call my husband back. One hour later, nobody had called, so I called both Kirk and Cristy's cell phones, left messages with each. I said that I was obviously frustrated that they hadn't shown up, but more so I'd just like to know if there was any chance they'd still arrive, as we'd have to cancel dinner plans to stay home and work on the yard if they weren't coming. Not surprisingly, nobody called back Sat, Sunday or Monday. On Monday, I again called the business and spoke with Cristy. She said, "Oh, I though Kirk called your husband. They'll be out today." She mentioned again how busy they were, but didn't seem to recognize what extremely poor customer service they had been providing. Cristy had also mentioned that they had purchased another trailer so they could run three crews to keep up with the business. When I purchased the certificate, I was told it would be a crew of three people working for one hour. When they did arrive on Monday, there were only two people- I guess this is how they increased the number of crews. I wrote a list of the services that Kirk and I had spoken about, and gave it to the crew member. He was rather rude and seemed annoyed that I was giving him a list. He said, "Yeah, we got it but I'm not sure how much we can do because it's raining." He proceeded to hack away at our tall grasses with out tying them off first, causing them to fly all over the yard as well as through/over the iron fence into our neighbor's immaculate yard. While they did some clean up, the yard was left looking incredibly messy. The other crew member, a young kid, spent 30 minutes picking leaf by leaf off 2 clematis vines, which I had originally told him to prune very, very lightly as a lot of what looked dead was actually alive; 30 minutes later, I had to come out tell him to stop and please spend his time on other areas of the yard. Multiple parts of the job that Kirk had said would be "no problem to get done in an hour" were not done, and in the end we had to go over to the neighbor's to apologize and clean up their yard. Not surprisingly, my calls to the company and Kirk's cell (re: the poor work done) have not been returned. Though it's only been a few hours, based on previous experience I wouldn't except them to call. What seemed to be a good deal for 1 hour of yard clean up has turned into many hours of phone calls and frustration. If you're keeping track, that was 3 weeks and 5 days from purchase of deal to completion of job, plus an estimated 19 phone calls to the company to get the job done, plus two more after to let them know the job was not done well.