Soon, think that. In your romance was easy for any homeowner that I've ever worked with and when we began, I said. It would be stressful. And stared as of. Getting just basic work done that's on the invoice and your bushes trimmed we went way past the scope of what we were supposed to be doing. We cut down extra bushes we removed the root balls removing a root ball from a Bush that's been in there over 20 years literally is a lot different than just cutting them down to the base we went way above and beyond so that way when people plant in the flower bed in the front they don't hit root balls. The edging on your yard looks perfect and the angle of your sidewalk is such that is on almost a 70 degree angle looking at it from the road it's 70 degrees. Also on the other side so you've got almost a triangle, it's not a square there was so much overgrowth that there was no way that you could see a rate. Have and not damage your. Some men. That's right up against the road. . You have a background in landscaping nobody in the world he would take a job and just get paid a 100 dollars down, but that's not just. The beginning of it. All the other work was heavy duty cleaning. Trimming shrubs that have to be done perfectly and if you make a mistake and somebody in your house that's it . If there is anybody that drives by and does not see the edging on your house and then look over right across the street and see your neighbors yard and their edge, which are virtually the same based on the pictures that I have. They were in bad shape. All they did was trim right to the edge they really didn't edge they just waited to the edge they didn't get in there and even allow a space between the sidewalk or in this case, the curve and the grass line. There was not. Then we matched the angle of the cement with the grass. Going over it several times, trying to get a perfect line visually all the way down a 180 feet of road we did by using several different passes it took. Almost a day and a half to make sure that the edge was perfect.. I've never seen a group of people that I brought in work harder and I paid my crew so much money. Labor is not cheap. It's the most expensive thing. And. I got burned on a review. You were high fiving my workers about how great they were doing. . Your carpenter or a carpet cleaner? Who you gave me the card for said how beautiful the stones were then the next thing you do is send me a notice that you want all the papers pulled up and that you want the decayed asphalt or whatever is underneath the cut out and put in a perfect angle. I've never had. People work so hard for so many days making sure that everything was perfect. We couldn't have done it without going bankrupt. If you honestly wanted a full landscaping job and not just a clean up job, it would have been 5000 dollars. We know this because we can see that landscaping and not just clean up work, the average cost for landscaping, which is exactly what we ended up doing, turned out to be 700 dollars in payments and 100 dollars for mulch that you said you. For anything. Fire accommodated and used my own money to do it, and I told you not to pay me if you didn't like the job. I made it very clear if you're not satisfied you do not have to pay me. If you had any comment at all you said in writing that you took care of the problem with the stone and then we showed up the next day after you kept the stone pavers and you wanted us to take them away, you told us that you had set the paper and you are going to keep them because I wrote to you pleading that you have a very nice entry way. Front door. Then we uncovered very carefully all the cement that was covered by years of overgrowth, and there's no way that those papers in the front of your house when you walk in could even be seen you couldn't see the design of anything or nothing. It had all been overgrown. It was. That the bushes in the front had to be removed, they looked terrible and I told you at the very beginning they looked like they needed to come out. You will hire somebody that specializes in real estate marketing and working with real estate agents to help them get their homes ready for sale and usually. Tags thousands of dollars to have people there for almost 4 days, we were there and we got paid 800 dollars because you kept on wanting more stuff done. I left much you seem very upset. When you responded in your email to me about getting the papers out, we would have spent another day of labor cutting in and trying to find the stone without destroying it so you could have a 35 year old paving stones that were sunk into the grass and I thought that was ugly and I said it was, you could have told me. You didn't want anything done with the papers. My suggestion was to rip up the old asphalt. And get rid of those crumbling papers. We edged around your flower in the front surrounding the mailbox we edged around the mailbox we edged almost 560 feet of curb. I sent you before. After photographs I took pictures of every single thing that we did, I have a copy of the invoice we did every single thing that you asked and you wanted to trees cut down behind our shed on top of everything else every time I turn on a chain saw and I'm in a narrow little setting like that, is it? And its deadly. When am on my hands and knees behind a shed cutting down trees to make your heart look better it's a life and death tool you could easily in a very narrow area like that have a chain saw kick out and hit the fence or the taller trees hit your. Bar shed that's made of just aluminum and that was it a tree hitting that would take it out probably weighed 800 pounds. If you're upset because I told you something didn't look right and it looked ugly and it needed to be taken out or that the papers needed to stay in but they needed to be finished with architectural sand or topsoil I never once told you that we were done setting the stones pavers on the walkway we hadn't even had a chance to finish before you want and then you went out and fixed it yourself, you wouldn't have fixed it yourself if you didn't like the way it looked, I asked you to get a third party opinion. I was out front of your house, making sure that that line looked about as perfect as you can get and was done the right way with a bevel matching the curb to the main road, if it was a square it would be different. You had a bevel so the bevel matches on both sides from the street and the stone and the bevel from. Making sure that your lawn was cut so it had a nice edge on it . Anybody looking at those pictures would say that it was done properly, you could have easily said you just want it weed wacked that would have taken me less than an hour and a half to 2 hours, but instead since it hadn't been done properly, probably in a decade or longer that was a monstrosity. I had to get a machine that would actually cut in a proper line, otherwise you'd be using a flat shovel, basically a sharp cutting device for cutting out lawn or flower beds a flat tool that's very sharp and many times we did that just to give you a straight line. There is no way on earth that I honestly believe that anybody who looks at that property before after could ever say that it doesn't look a million times better, it looked trashed when I got there, the street view looked awful and the value of your home depends on the curb appeal. And if you want to pay somebody 800 dollars. And they're paying 300 dollars for 3 people for labor for 4 days, almost with the exception of one day you had 3 laborers plus myself. You had mission creep all over the place compared to what was on the invoice. You received the invoice and when he got the invoice you could have easily made changes to it that you just wanted things weed wacked. You didn't say that you wanted it edged now you have an edge before you're just had somebody weed whack something and make it line that was straight. But that's not the. As people who have not properly edged their lawn. There is no way after taking the picture and removing the sod that came out that that was ever done properly in years. On top of that we swept everything up, we used the cleaning solutions and we removed all of the leaf debris. I made several trips to the dump. There was almost. Arts of debris I think I should have won an award for doing this it turned out fantastic and I had a feeling that this job was going to go from high 5 all the sudden when I got your email about the pavers and it did. You would have had me there for another week for 800 dollars and I said to you [Member Name Removed], if we take out the additional bushes it's going to cost a lot more money. This isn't just about how much it costs for labor I'm using the very best chain saws and equipment that you could ever get. There is no better equipment than what we brought to your house I have the rental agreement that shows the exact unit that we brought to your house to cut the edge and on top of that we brought eating equipment made by the very best in the business.STHL. I just can't imagine somebody walking out and meeting the entire crew, saying that she really liked her work and then give me a low rating. New on eyes spoke about. All of the creep that came into the project are all of the additional things that you want done, but we never even talked about how much that would be, I just said please treat us fairly. You owned a nursery. You know what labor costs are? This is something that was not [Member Information Removed] to you or you work for a nursery, it's one or the other I do not know, but I do not think that after you have people on your property working with an entire crew at full strength for 3 days and then having me out there for an additional day we would leave anything for the 800 dollars that we go. Got 3000 dollars worth of work and they would be very appreciative that it looks so good because it looked horrific when I got there. I told you it didn't look good from the street those bushes looked horrendous and when the first2 were cut out immediately I told you that of the rest of them at that point, you looked at it saw what I was saying and said yes, take out the rest of the bushes. The chain saw blades are expensive . Loading up and removing. 5 cubic yards of debris we took many trips to the dump at full capacity there was so much debris on your yard I've never seen anything like it it really went to h*** and your real estate agent was probably having a heart attack getting ready for opening day? In all my years of doing this 8 years working with real estate people, I've never actually worked with the homeowner, I've worked with the realtor to clean up the home, but when you get a home owner involved, that's already anxious about getting their homes sold. Then I knew within. That this was going to end badly and that's why I made sure I took notes and every single thing was written down photographed and sent to the company he asked to get the work done from because I told them that I'm having problems with the homeowner. It's not something that I would bring up to you. I merely asked you. We were going beyond what we originally talked about and there had to be some changes, either in the financial compensation or the amount of things that you wanted us to keep on doing. Instead I see a rating where I'm getting punished for it and I never argued with you except for tell you that you would not benefit from having papers and that was not an argument that was me giving you my professional opinion after spending the better part of 8 years doing this and then having a real estate license good text on engineering sciences. And after landscaping for over 30 years, not just doing engineering work but actually having a passion for this, I look at your house and it would be something that would be I appealing, as opposed to the way it looked before. This was not an 8 hour job. This was not a 20 hour job. This was every bit a 30 hour job multiplied by 3 people so it was 90 hours worth of work. That doesn't even include my time, but yet I gave you a price of 600 dollars plus mulch, and then you and I spoke about all of this other stuff and I said please just treat me fairly, thank you for giving me such a low rating that was not something that I would have ever expected, but I did anticipate there was no way. I couldn't even get in touch with you by phone, you would not speak to me when I told you don't, I got your message about the stones, just to let you know that they're not even done. They needed to be set with soil or architectural sand. If I had said that the stones were done, then I would have signed off on it as being done, we were doing many things all at the same time so it takes time to go through and make sure you've got everything done when I was done, I didn't even have the chance to even go through, except with your husband and yourself, and you guys said it was great I look. And that all I was doing and we agreed was to come back, make sure that your eye line of the curve at the very bottom of the hill where the road is that looked perfect. If you don't like the bevel, then you would have destroyed or possibly destroyed. If that machine. To touching it the. Once between the road and your lawn because everything was chipping and deteriorated because it was so old. The Bush are scrubbed that you're talking about where the branch fell off it, rotted off and it fell off, and if anybody looked at it and examined it, they would see that it just fell off it didn't take anything for it to fall off it just fell off by just trimming the Bush. It wasn't even cut that one branch just now. Was no way to cut it because it was rotted. You never told me after examining the lawn that there was anything wrong with that push and secondly you should have looked at it and actually seemed that its rotting. If I'm cutting down something or trimming it and the Bush is rotted and I don't even cut it and it just falls off then it's not my fault that in nature and. If you look at the bevel on the driveway, all of your concrete is all destroyed because it's old it would all have to be redone and resurfaced just about everything you have that is old concrete or old asphalt needs to be replaced or fixed. When I came inside your house, you asked me to look at it and I gave you my honest opinion, I told you that. For you had painted the stripes that there were too many colors including different comforters and I after doing the bathrooms and other restorations when they walk into that room they want to see a neutral color and see matching comforters so they could see themselves actually using that room. There wasn't anything I didn't provide you. That wasn't honest feedback to help you get the most amount of money for the sale of your house so the rating that you gave me is not commensurate with the amount of work that we did the quality of work that we did, nor do I think that it even reflects the work that went into it and you have pictures of everything and I have video of everything. Since they have my records of what was happening, then you have. 3 full days of running a 4 person crew and then one day of a one man crew I am in. A not surprised. A point of view that no matter what we were going to do to try to please you or to try to make everything perfect, it wouldn't have been that way because you were obviously high fiving people telling them they did a great job, then you have an eye witness who is a third party, your carpet cleaner, saying how good it looked. I think we've got your neighbors saying the same thing there. Isn't anybody that walks by that street. Single one of the neighbors I met took time to say wow what an improvement that looks amazing. That's called curb appeal, and that's what you and I talked about when I first started this otherwise I would not take the job. My reputation means everything that's why I photograph everything. I have the invoice I have your checkout list. It's getting to the point where it was so ridiculous for 800 dollars get, I hope Angie's list and the people that I worked for appreciate what I went through was somebody who is trying to sell their own. It's not a question of whether people like me or don't like me, the whole point is am I doing what you asked me to do, and secondly, when you saw the bushes cut you said again in your comment to Angie's list that it was below the level that you wanted, but then you told my worker and myself that it's actually healthier where it was cut. You said you actually liked it more. Then you put it down and memorialize it in a comment that I just read that now we're screwing up somehow when you're doing something this big and you want it perfect you do it perfect. A I take experienced landscape people on there, and they think that an additional inch has to come off are 2 inches to make the plant healthy and to have it trimmed properly, I'm going to have to go with the people that I work with and trust them because they know what they're doing. The bushes look fuller. They look healthier. They look like they're going to branch out and be thicker and those are your words. Not mine. The steps needed to be claimed of algae and moss you couldn't just take it off unless I use a power washer if I used a power washer I told you that cement would go flying everywhere and concrete and concrete pebbles were all over your pathways your driveways there isn't any area that has asphalt cement concrete work that wasn't getting to the point what was time to rip it up and just put in a new walkway. I? The second thing is I will get second opinions and third opinions. I've already gotten your neighbors opinions about the edging and I have pictures of it, I think it looks about as perfect as you can get because it matches. The sidewalk barrier between the driveway you do not have a 90 degree angle porter. You have a 70 degree border. It would look really strange. I couldn't use an edging machine and go straight down. I had to cut where the stone actually stopped. You wanted things edged you didn't say that you wanted things weed eated to create an edge. If you say you want things and then they get edged if you say you want things we dated, then they get weeded it. If you see how many inches of dirt is between the grass and the curve, the height of it varies dramatically over the 180 feet plus of driveway to curb to street that you have.. If we show up for that many days, doing that kind of hard labor and get a low rating for responsiveness. Quality professionalism we were getting sea ratings for those, but yet your high fiving my crew saying they're doing a good job that's completely. Who is leading to tell us we're doing a great job and to tell us the next moment in a rating that were not even your person who did your carpet cleaning would never say that we did a bad job he walked out there and said it looked amazing that's because he was there before we got there and he was there after we had done a tremendous amount of work and he wanted us to do his lawn so I don't mind getting reputation. Because the pictures that you're displaying are not all the pictures that I sent you. Those are not the final pictures, which is misleading.. When you post misleading pictures to Angie's list that is not credible it shows that that's deceptive and to me its abusive. I kept my mouth shut the entire time the only thing I said was you do not have to pay us if you do not like our work how many people tell you not to pay us if you're not completely satisfied you shouldn't have paid us if you weren't satisfied and that's it because I gave you that in writing. That means that if I don't do exactly what was on that invoice and then on top of it remove the additional bushes and do all the additional work that you wanted us to do pay for it out of my pocket yes that will destroy a company. I feel as though I've been treated unfairly I've been judged unfairly and good situation and it doesn't reflect well on the people that I'm working for to try to help them. This was an incredibly intense job it was nowhere near just a clean up job and by the time I got done I'm the one who went and picked up all the other debris went everybody laughed on the last day we had a full crew to come back and make sure that everything was swept up and cleaned, we had somebody sweeping your steps coming down from your patio for well over 2 hours, so you could see the actual patio even using water and sprayers that you had we had to get in there and just get all the dirt out of every single crack so you could see the paper when you walk down. I would have removed the aging material. It was all pieced together, it was not in a straight line and we had to find it because it had all been overgrown. Each and every time that we have to do something like this increases the amount of time that we're actually using labor. Instead of getting a bad rating and having people mischaracterize and misrepresent things, especially in the pictures that you're showing me an attaching, I have to show them the pictures that I've got and dispute what you're saying. Then I have to call the company that I was talking to and send them everything so they can review this because now you're having an impact on my reviews and business. I am getting supplies. And has nothing to do with me being punctual and has to do with me being out there in a truck running around getting stuff so that way, we can finish the job that doesn't mean that we're not on the job, it means that somebody actually has to go and make sure we've got the supplies. You must characterize many of the statements and I'm sure you're going to benefit greatly from the work because the pictures will be going to Angie's list and then I will let them know what's happening.. They have extensive notes already because this went on for several days, this was not a one day incident I just was doing the best I could with somebody who was under stress from selling their home, and I have no doubt that on your opening day with the real estate people that they're gonna say anything negative in fact. Because you have a link and you've obviously downloaded some, it just happens to be the inappropriate ones, the ones that show that I'm not finished. I have the images that show that I am finished. There's a big difference between what you're presenting to Angie's list, which is misleading versus the images that I have. I'm proud of the work that my workers did. I'm proud of the work that I did, I'm proud of everything that we did under the circumstances that were not really working out for us at all, we didn't say a word, the only thing I asked was that if you were going to have us to additional things that you pay us fairly. You not only didn't pay us fairly as you said you would. You ended up giving us a nasty rating because I wrote you a letter saying how I thought important it was to keep the pavers in place and not use the old papers and they have the email records because it was all done with internal email. I think that. You are paying craigslist prices are less I learned my lesson. It's something I will never do again and I will never bit a project it is with a homeowner who's ready to move. You both had nursery jackets on and. Every time I spoke with either yourself or your husband, we went over everything and then did a walk through after we were done in the evening at that point. You didn't have a problem with anything. I think you're just upset because I took the position that if you removed the paving stones and the only thing you could do was to use a crowbar to get the old ones out to really counter sink them it would have cost you more money but you were not willing to commit to that so you asked me to cut the grass and everything away huge amount of time to the project. We got micro managed to the point where I doubled the amount of labor easily if not more. You are outside with us picking weeds and doing things you could have easily said anything you wanted to at that point that you are not happy you are just satisfied and you didn't say anything you kept on telling us we were doing a great job. If for any reason I was running late, it wasn't because I wasn't doing something for you, it was actually because we were out getting supplies and I don't even think we took lunch breaks, the only lunch break we took was when you brought us sandwiches thats it. We worked from the morning, usually around 8 to 9 am until it got dark every single day.
