Louisville Mulch & Tree Care

Work was performed but invoice included fabricated hours, inflated material amounts and costs as well as artificially bloated hourly rates that were not agreed to despite their claims to the contrary. This ordeal includes well-documented, unrepentant fraud on behalf of the company's owner and management. Even when confronted with video evidence showing they lied about the material delivered and work performed, they refused numerous times to admit to fraudulent activities and their shady business practices. AVOID

I needed two dead trees cut down. Called and the next morning a man came out and gave me an estimate. He reeked from the previous nights drinking. We agreed that they'd cut the trees, hauling off the limbs and cut and stack the usable firewood, and would do the work the next Friday. I took off work that day and they didn't show. 10 days later they came without warning and did the work. I didn't know until I got home from work. They left 3 30 foot logs uncut and laying on the edge of my driveway. When they called for my credit card, I complained and the owner said he'd sent someone right out to cut the firewood. That was two weeks ago.....

I called and ordered 10 yards of mulch. The lady told me they could deliver the next day in the morning between 8 and 12 noon. I took the day off work because they said I needed to be here and i planned on putting the mulch in my mulch beds. By 11 am they had not showed up. I called to find out what was going on. I was told they would have to call and find out what happened and they would call back. No one called back so I called again at 12:15 and someone else answered. He said everyone was at lunch and they would call back. I told him the story and he said well i'm sure someone will deliver after lunch. He could have cared less about my situation. I leased equipment to move the bulk mulch today and took the day off to get this done. Now I have half a day left and I still don't have my mulch. A little after 1:00 pm the guy called and asked if I still wanted my mulch. I told him I was upset and who could I talk to. He sent me to the office manager who told me that there was nothing they could do about my lost day of work or the equipment I leased to move the bulk mulch. She only wanted to give me my money back. She told me they work with nurseries and retailers and they had orders to fill this morning for those groups. Then why did you tell me that you would deliver between 8 and noon. They did not bother to call me and let me know. These people have no sense of customer service nor do they care about customer service for the general public. I wish I had looked at the AngiesList rating before I called them. No wonder they are using Discount direct mail postcards to drum up business which is why I called them. What a waste of time for a business to spend money on marketing then just upset the customer when they respond to it. Do yourself a favor and don't waste your time or money calling this company.

The guy I was supposed to meet for an estimate of the work, was not on time and I had to call him to check his status. He was running late and sent Ed Hager to meet me. Ed was about 30 minutes late for the appointment time. When I saw Ed I realized he had done some tree removal work for us several years ago. He apologized for being late and told me he would make it up to me by giving me a good price for the work I was looking for. He gave me a reasonable price for putting down Preen, delivering and laying down 3 to 4 inches of mulch, edging the flower and tree beds, and trimming up a couple of trees and shrubs. I accepted the price and we set the work for the following week. I called Ed a couple of days later on a Sunday to see if I could get some bushes removed and additional trees trimmed. He came right out that Sunday night, gave me an estimate and proceeded to do the work right there and then. Real high marks for responsiveness! Not many companies come out on a Sunday evening for an estimate much less conduct the work. When this work was done, we agreed on the upcoming Wednesday after 2pm to be the day for laying the mulch and cleaning the gutters. I told him I planned to take time off from work so I could be around. I got a call on Tuesday that Ed and his crew were at my home starting the job. I had to quickly and inconveniently adjust my calendar to leave work. When I arrived, the mulch was already down in many areas and some of his crew were on the roof cleaning the gutters. Ed told me he must have got the day mixed up and apologized. I asked him if he had put down the Preen before he laid the mulch and he said yes. After about two weeks now, I am seeing weeds coming up through the mulch so I am not 100% sure he did. After they were finished, I had a little bit of clean up to do but most of the job was picked up well. I have found inconsistency in the mulch depth and in some areas the mulch was thin and not the promised 3 - 4 inches. I had to take areas that had excessive mulch and move to areas that were sparse with mulch. I will say the mulch was beautiful and of good quality! The boxwood, that replaced my damaged one, was very nice and healthy. The crew was friendly, responsive and hard working.

Ed Hager III, the owner of the company, came out to see the yard and give me the quote. He told me that the landscaping fabric I requested that they put down was a silly, useless convention for 'old ladies who are afraid of weeds' (his words). I even had the landscape fabric for them to put down, but he repeatedly assured me that it was unnecessary, and that they would put down 'a thick enough layer of mulch to kill everything underneath' and that they were going to bring in some kind of machine to 'skim' my yard, taking all the current weeds and bad soil up. Then the thick layer of mulch would decay, leaving lovely, pollutant free, nitrogen rich soil to plant ground cover in next year. I took his professional opinion, paid up front for the services he recommended, and expected the work to be done the following day. The work was done several days after I had been told to expect it, even though my check was deposited immediately. I was away at the time, and returned to see his workers loading up the truck and preparing to leave. I had to stop them and point out that there were still lots of large weeds to remove. While the orders I had given to Mr. Hager had been extremely specific, apparently his crew was just operating under some vague generality of 'clean the yard up' without knowing what was to stay and what they should remove. They repeated Mr. Hager's opinion that the mulch would indeed kill everything underneath it. Less than a week after the work was completed, I have already spent a few hours pulling individual weeds through my mulch. I now plan on spraying an organic herbicide on my lawn, which is the last thing I wanted to do, but what are my options? Pay someone else ANOTHER $725 to come out and do what I wanted done in the first place? As a homeowner, I want to be able to trust the professional opinions of the people I hire. I strongly feel that this company uses 'Trust me, I know what I'm doing' as a way to get out of doing work they don't want to do, while still getting the job. If I had known these would be my results, I would have chosen to do business with someone else.