I’m a professional land surveyor that prides myself on always performing high quality survey work at an affordable price. As you’ll see by my past responses from my clients, I was a so-called “straight A student”, until this post by the Member. I can almost guarantee that the main reason the Member is unhappy is because we found that her driveway is encroaching onto her neighbor’s property, and I documented it as such. I am somewhat like a baseball umpire and have to “call ‘em as I see ‘em” even though the Member was my client. The whole reason she wanted the survey done was because when she was recently on vacation, her neighbor to the south decided to cut down a long, tall bush row next to the Member’s driveway, and of course, the Member thought they were her bushes, hence the need for the survey. I gave both the Member, and her neighbor to the north an excellent, extremely reasonable price... The neighbor was very pleased with my survey work and final price, but the Member wasn’t. She just decided that I overcharged her, even though she was there when we arrived, and when we finished. We were there 6 hours, she says 5, even though when you look at her own timetable she wrote in her post, it totals 5-3/4 hours, plus we walked her around her property to show her all the survey stakes which took another 15 minutes. Plus the driving time charge, plus my research, job setup, and CAD drafting time and our total time would have equaled a total charge of $970, but I only charged the $850 that I quoted them… $425 apiece. We even had to deal with having to move obstacles (ladders, etc…) and yard debris to be able to set the stakes around her property. Some people just can’t be pleased! In response to some of the Member's claims: 1) Most if not all professional land surveying companies have one or more survey crews that actually perform the field work, as in my case. My survey crew's party chief, who the Member referred to as "someone named Ron", actually has over 25 years experience and is extremely qualified. I as the registered surveyor and owner of Capitol Survey Co., have complete confidence in Ron's ability to perform all procedures related to completing my survey work in the field. In this profession there is such great liability that it's imperative to have very knowledgeable and trustworthy people performing all work. Once Ron gathers all the data evidence on the location of all survey points and monuments found within the vicinity of the properties to be surveyed, he relays by cell phone all the coordinates of every survey point found. I then analyze this data within specialized computer software to determine how accurately the found points align with what is referred to as the "record location" based upon recorded subdivision plats and/or deeds. Once I finalize my office calculations, I relay the necessary coordinate data back to Ron so he can complete the field work. As you can see, we stay in contact with each other throughout the whole process... I'm the one making the decisions on the placement of the boundaries. I also know exactly how much time is spent during every survey, so I'm able to relay to my field crew what to charge the client for each survey. In this particular case, I knew that by 2 PM when I spoke to Ron that this 2 lot survey was going to take more time to complete than I estimated, because he still had a lot of work to complete both surveys. So I instructed Ron to get a check for $425 from both neighbors since they were splitting the cost of the survey work. Again, I only charged what I quoted as the maximum cost of $850. Somehow, the Member has determined that I decided to charge the maximum even before we started the field work, which is DEFINITELY NOT TRUE!... I told my crew in the morning when we were reviewing the survey work to be done that day, that I quoted in the range of $700 to a max of $850, or $350 to $425 per neighbor, but as always the final cost of the survey is determined by hourly rates and time spent, PERIOD. I want to make it clear also, I specifically told both the Member and her neighbor, that if they had any questions, or if they wanted stakes placed in any specific location, to let my party chief Ron know. So there should have been no question in either clients mind that I personally was not going to be performing the field work, and I never stated that I would. Also, in regards to the Member's claim that we didn't set a midpoint stake along her rear boundary, there were overgrown bushes along the whole boundary, plus that boundary was only 62 feet long so a midpoint was not necessary, not customary, nor was it requested at any time while the survey was being performed. I'm upset that the Member's unhappy with my survey, but she should have voiced her displeasure to me instead of posting such a NEGATIVE response here on Angie's List. I definitely did not deserve this. When I delivered my Map of Survey with the invoice, and expected to be paid (I was supposed to be paid the day we did the field work, the neighbor paid, but the Member didn't). The Member did try to get me to lower my price after all my work was complete, but I thought she was just "playing the game", trying to save some money, even though I explained to her the total time spent equaled more than what she paid for. We always complete every survey without cutting any corners, always providing land survey work to the best of my ability, even if I have to accept less than my already low hourly rates.