Leatham Landscaping and Lawn Care Inc.

We had Stan out to look at the property and make a bid in may 2011. Stan Leatham is a very nice person to talk to, and is helpful in planning.. but getting past planning is the issue. After meeting the readi-rock people we changed the quote to remove some of the trees they were going to plant. I paid Stan 8K to get them started, told him I wanted the updated quote with receipt for the 8k, and we were scheduled to start the wall first thing in July. After hearing no updates from Stan I sent him an email on July 15th. He answered right back with "Hi Chris Im Out of town untill Monday I will check everything and followup with you then". After not hearing from Stan all week, I called and asked what was going on. He told me they would start work the next day and that it would take a week to finish. One guy showed up the next day and tore down the existing fence. After four more days I texted Stan asking for a time frame. He told me they would start the next day. About 3:00 the next day two guys showed up and asked me multiple questions about what we were doing. It was obvious that Stan had not talked to them at all. They actually seemed shocked about some of my answers. Example: worker - "can we just dump the old bark over the side of the hiil" Me - "No, it is in the bid for you to take it away" worker - " Really? oh." The workers spent the next few days ripping up bushes and trees and leveling the area for the wall. The worked 3-5 hours a day, and asked questions about everything. On july 27th I sent an email and called Leatham asking for the updated quote and receipt since I still had not received it. On the 28th I received a bill that was the original quote with the 8K taken off. I had to remind them again that they need to update the quote and got it a day later. The guys that were working on the fence told me that the rock would be delivered and they would start on August 2nd. The rock showed up and they uploaded it. They did not show up again to start the work until the 4th. They went fairly quickly for two guys moving tons of Redi-Rock. I had to leave on August 6th for a business trip, leaving my wife to deal with the landscaping. She gave me reports all week, some days they worked, some days they didn't. She had noticed that they had just thrown the tree and flowers that they had pulled up into empty pots and in the August heat they were all about dead. She asked the work what was going on with them and he asked "Did you want me to do something with them?" She called Stan and he said that he would replace what died. On Friday the 12th, my wife called me to let me know that they were done, but they had planted some of the dead flowers, built a small/crappy fence out of spare lumber to fill in a gap where they had measured wrong and there were gaps in the redi-rock wall. I decided I would take care of it when I got back and told her not to give him final payment until it was fixed. To which she told me he made her pay him the final payment earlier that week. As you can imagine, I was not happy with either one of them. Once I got back I called Stan to having a meeting to talk about what needed to be done. He showed up on August 31st with the Redi-Rock person and agreed on what needed to be done. He told me he would have someone over in the next few days to fix the fence, fill in redi-rock gaps and replace plant. After not hearing from him again, I texted on September 13th asking for a date for the project to be done. Today is September 15th and the guy just finished the work. It looks good now and we are happy... but this was a nightmare job. What was supposed to be a one week job ran from July 1st to September 15th. Stan is in NO WAY professional and I would stay FAR away from this company.