William's Landscaping Services

Williams Landscaping has been cutting our grass and doing spring and fall cleanup for several years. They have done a pretty good job- not stellar but no major complaints and they've been generally reliable. Recently, I came home after they'd been here and found they had cut down the plants in 3 areas of my garden. While there were weeds in 2 of these areas, there were also perennials I had planted. These are areas under maple trees, so it is extremely difficult to get things to grow, and this year was the first one where some of the plants had finally started to flourish. Two of these areas were clearly marked with stone borders as garden areas. And even in the area that was not clearly designated, we actually liked the mix of planted and wild plants, some of which were wild herbs that we used for cooking. While this was obviously a mistake, Williams Landscaping has never taken care of my garden beds. They cut our lawn and cleaned up leaves and nothing more. They have never been asked to cut down weeds in my garden beds. So while it was clearly a mistake, they had no business touching any of these areas. I assume someone new on the crew made an assumption and thought they were doing a good thing. It was wrong - but I'm sure it was well-intentioned. It's the way the owner responded to this that is the reason for this review. I will also note that this happened about 5 weeks before we were planning to have a wedding in our backyard. The areas that were cut down looked awful, and the crew didn't even clear out what they had cut down - so not only was it bare instead of lush, but the beds and paths were covered with slowly dying plants, making it look even worse. When I told William Perez what had happened, he didn't apologize or express any concern whatsoever. He ignored completely that I was upset about how our yard would look for the wedding. In fact, to this day, now well over a month later, he has never apologized or acknowledged the error. He never made any offer to "make things right" or make sure the backyard would look okay for our wedding. He did make a point more than once of telling me how busy he was. What he conveyed was not regret for the inconvenience caused but annoyance that I was bothering him by asking him what he would do about this. I told him I would buy some plants to replace some of what was cut down (he didn't offer to do this for me). He did eventually say he would pay for them, but it's now a month since I sent him the receipt and I've yet to get a check or any response regarding his intention. He eventually sent someone over to do the planting for me but even then, he didn't ask when it would be convenient for me and he refused to give me any idea when during the planned day they would show up - not even a 4 hour window. In the end, after waiting at home the entire day, the guy showed up after 5pm. I will say that the man he sent over was very nice, polite and did a great job. I have no complaints about that - just about the owner. So now, with our wedding a few days away, we have a handful of plants in place. It looks reasonably good. I bought the plants. I cleaned out and mulched the beds after the gentleman who was sent over planted them. Mr. Perez has not honored his promise to reimburse me for the plants. And he has never apologized or expressed any regret. He doesn't respond to messages. It's hard to understand how someone running their own business in a service profession feels no need to even pretend he cares about his customers. Honestly, I've never dealt with anyone in a similar circumstance who behaved this way. It would have taken very little on his part to make this experience completely different and have me recommending his business despite the error. While Williams landscaping is okay for basic yard care I would never use them for anything else - certainly not for masonry, landscaping or pretty much anything substantial. The owner's attitude is pretty much "take it or leave it", and don't bother me because I'm a busy man.