Schifsky Landscaping Co

Description of Work: Landscaping and reseeding of lawn.

Description of Work: We engaged Schifsky Landscaping to do a backyard landscaping project. When we called Schifsky we were told that we needed to talk to Jack at Landscape Design Studios to start the process. Jack works directly with Troy, the owner of Schifsky to put together drawings/estimates on the projects they work on. We met with three different companies to discuss the project and get estimates. | |After reviewing the various quotes we received on our landscaping project, we decided to go with the Schifsky Landscaping proposal. We had received a couple of quotes that were within the same price range and felt good about both companies. We felt that Jack who was representing Schifsky brought a couple of nice ideas to the project. So, based on the prices being the same and a couple ideas we liked in the Schifsky proposal we decided to go with them. We gave them a $2,000 deposit and that is when the problems began. | |I will summarize the issues we had with them and if you are interested I have provided a more detailed timeline of events after the summary. | |The general issues we had with them were as follows: | |• Lack of Communication: They consistently told us they would get back to us within a certain time frame, but never did. We would have to call several days to a week after their promised response date to check on the status of the project. |• "Bait and Switch" Pricing: Their estimate based on our initial meeting with them to discuss everything we wanted done in the project was $16,000 with an upside of $20,000 being the high end conservative estimate taking into account up graded material choices, etc. After they took our deposit and refined their quote, the price they quoted was between 144% and 200% higher than the "conservative" $20,000 quote they had initially provided to do the same work. We tried to be flexible with them so we could get a workable design that would come in at, or at least closer to our $20,000 budget like we had initially discussed but after 3 tries they were never able to come close to the initial estimate. |• Did not Refund our Deposit: We requested a refund of our $2,000 deposit because they were not able to provide a plan with the components and price that was even close to what we had initially discussed and agreed to. They were going to refund us $1,000 which we felt was unacceptable. After a discussion with the owners spouse explaining our frustrations, we were told that they would check into it and get back to us. We never heard from them but did receive a $1,250 check in the mail a week or so later with no other communication. | |We did not want to write this review until we had met with another landscaper and went through their design/pricing process, which we have now done. We are pleased to report that the proposal we received from them includes all of the things that we had initially discussed with Schifsky Landscaping. There was one big difference; the price is actually exactly where they originally proposed the project to be, which was within our $20,000 budget. | |I would not recommend Schifsky Landscaping or Landscape Design Studios to anybody based on our experience. | | If you are interested in more detail I have tried to lay out the timeline of what transpired below: | |Initial meeting June 13th, 2014. | - Discussed the project and were given a rough estimate of approx $16,000 to do all of the work that we discussed. Jack then made the comment that $20,000 would be a very conservative number and would cover all of the things we wanted to do. | - Jack gave us a "Design Services Agreement and Receipt" that outlined the work to be done and the "budget" of $20,000 assigned to the project. He told us if we wanted to go with them we would need to sign the document and give them a $2,000 deposit. When they received this we "shall be placed on the schedule queue". | - The current opening in their queue was the beginning of Aug, 2014. | |We reviewed the other bids we received and decided to go with the Schifsky Landscaping proposal. | - The other bids came in around the same price but we thought Jack had some nice ideas for the layout so we went with them. | - We signed the agreement on June 17th, 2014. The agreement and check were picked up on June 20th, 2014. | - We didn't hear from them for a few weeks so we sent them an email on July 7th to check on the status of starting the design process, and to determine what day the project was scheduled for per the agreement. | - This prompted a meeting to be scheduled to go over the preliminary design of the project and pricing for July 17th, 2014. | - We met on July 17th and reviewed the plan and cost structure. | - Other than the lack of communications this is where we had our first frustration with the price estimate. | - The estimate was presented to us in a range with the low cost being $28,804.8 and the high cost being $39,477.00. | - This was a surprise to us that they would come back to us with an estimate after putting a $2,000 deposit down of 144% - 200% higher than their original high end estimate of $20,000 which was a big part of our decision process in going with them. | - In the meeting we told Jack that this was outside of our budget and asked him what we could do to rework the plan to get the number in line with what we initially discussed. | - We were willing to make changes to reduce the cost even though this was all included in the original $20,000 estimate. | - He told us he would go back and revise the plan to reduce the cost to get it more in line with our budget and that he would have it back to us by the end of the weekend, July 20th. | |We received no communication from him over the weekend so we emailed him on July 22nd for an update. | |On July 23rd he emailed us an updated drawing of the layout but it did not include the price update. He told us he would get back to us on the pricing. | |Again we received no communication from Jack so I emailed him on July 29th for the status on the pricing update. | - Jack then responded on July 29th that he would have it by "tomorrow". | - Again no communication from Schifsky, so I emailed Jack on August 4th for a status. | - Jack responded on August 6th with "Still working on it". | |We then received an updated price list on August 9th and met with Jack on August 11th. | - The quote was $24,634 which sounds closer to the $20,000 original estimate, but items that were taken out included a much needed boulder wall that we did not want taken out ($13,200 for the wall and fill). He also changed the irrigation repair "allowance" from $2,000 to an allowance of $800. We had agreed to use mulch instead of rock to help reduce the cost but Jack told us "he doesn't use rock in his proposals much so he isn't very good at estimating rock prices". The mulch estimate was the same as the previous rock estimate so our cost on this didn't change. So if you add these "reductions" back into the revised quote the total "Reduced" estimate would be $39,034??? | - Again frustration, the numbers went down but he basically just took a major component out of the plan and reduced an allowance item to $800 even though he knew it would cost $2,000. | - He then told us he would go back and rework the plan and get back to us. | - We had not been added to the queue at this point per the agreement that we signed with Schifsky. | - Before leaving, Jack told us that he was putting us in the queue and they would start the project on August 25th. | |At this point we wanted to give them one more chance | - Again there was no communication from Schifsky and we were concerned that they were scheduled to start the project on Aug 25th so we emailed them on August 20th for an update. | - We then got an email from Jack on August 20th saying that he needed to talk to Troy on the final price and he would give me a call later today. | - We of course received no call. | |On August 25th we received an updated quote of $28,964. That quote did include the stone wall that was removed from the last quote but it did not include any allowance for irrigation repair and they removed the garden mix for the plants. | - Jack also told us, although the Boulder wall was included in the estimate he was trying to find somebody else to do that part because "Schifsky was not that good at building boulder walls because they weren't really equipped to do them" that's why the price was so high on this component. | - At this point we were frustrated enough to tell them we no longer wanted to work with them and asked for our $2,000 deposit back. | |After a couple weeks of not hearing from them we called to get a status of our refund. | - We talked to the owners spouse and were told they were going to send us a check for $1,000 which was half of our deposit. | - We were surprised at this and explained our frustration with the process and that we never got what was agreed to initially. | - She said she would look into it and get back to us, and of course never did | |We eventually did receive a refund check in the mail for $1,250 of the $2,000 deposit. |

Description of Work: Spring clean up, added plants to perennial gardens & mulched all gardens, then came every other week to pull/spray weeds, trim & prune plants & brushes, then did fall clean-up, including pond clean-up and covering.

Description of Work: They did several landscaping jobs for us this summer (planting trees, multch, garden landscaping, and stone pavers.