A BROWN & SONS NURSERY

The deciding factor in rehashing my experience with this company to post this review was how terribly the owner treated me and his employee who worked with me when I spoke with him on the phone. Please do not waste your money on this company. They are disorganized, give you faulty products and blame customers for the products failing, and their management is rude to customers and are willing to throw their employees under the bus and accuse them of lying if it suits them. I have since talked to other companies who frequently see customers who have had a bad experience with A. Brown. The comment I’ve heard is that they will come out and do a job cheaply but their follow-up customer service is terrible. There is a review on the Better Business Bureau's site (for a much lower cost project) that sounds very similar to what happened to me. For the full story, read on. A. Brown and Sons installed trees at my property on October 29, 2013, instructing me to water them “a couple of times” in November and then follow their watering instructions, which state to resume watering in May. Before the watering season began, all ten trees had turned brown and died. When a representative for the company finally came out and looked at the trees, he agreed there must have been something wrong with the trees and told me that other customers had had trees die on them that winter. He said they were a new variety for them. At the beginning of July, 2014, the company replaced all ten trees. I took photos of the newly installed trees, which had brown branches from the beginning, and sent them to the company via email to document the problem and to show the setup of drip hoses that would be used to water them. I called them and their representative told me that the branches were probably just damaged on the install and to just water the trees on schedule and not worry about it. The trees were watered properly and looked good through the fall. Once again, towards the end of winter, three of the trees – the ones that I had photographed with brown branches from the start - appeared to be dying. I have photo documentation of their deterioration. Upon contacting the company, I was told once again that I needed to wait until spring to water them and that there was nothing I could do. These three trees died before watering season began. I contacted the company repeatedly that spring (2015) to get someone out to look at the trees. They put me off repeatedly, and when I moved temporarily to be my mother’s primary caregiver when she was dying of cancer, I asked my property management company to take over communication with A. Brown and Sons. The company was contacted a number of times over the next 15 months and both employees of the property management company and I were put off by staff and told that someone would be out to look at the trees. At no point between July of 2014 and July of 2016 was the management company or I told that the trees wouldn’t be replaced or reimbursed. When we finally got someone from A. Brown and Sons to give us an answer, we were told that the trees wouldn’t be replaced because replacement trees “aren’t subject to the original warranty”, and that further, the original trees probably died due to my negligence. The owner of the company threw his employee under the bus and said that the information I’d been given about other customers’ trees dying was “embellished” – in other words, he said his employee lied. He claimed none of the new trees were covered by the warranty, which is a violation of Ohio Revised Code Sections 1302.27 and 1302.28 (implied warranties of fitness of their product, which cannot be overridden by written warranties). This means that the trees were expected to meet a certain performance – they should have been selected well, and they should have been suitable to survive an Ohio winter – and they failed to do so. Consider this: I was having trees planted as a screen for the apartments behind my property – what motivation did I have to not take care of the trees? They needed to be in long enough to grow together, not replaced every year. But the company has lots of motivation to stiff customers. They can easily sell their best trees to commercial customers who will give them volume business. Then they just give the residential customers - who don’t have as much leverage and will likely not be repeat customers – their worst stock. They get the money while offloading trees that weren’t going to make it, and then the residential customers have no recourse (this is part of the reason there are warranty laws, by the way). I have not been reimbursed and the owner of the company was rude, condescending, and offensive when I called to work things out amicably. Photos show trees with dead branches, as they were installed, then in mid-winter, then in April, dead before watering season began.

kjhlkjhlkjhljkhljh THIS IS SO BOGUS. I NEVER HAD ANY WORK DONE BY THIS COMPANY. STOP SENDING ME THIS RATING GIZMO

He did a fantastic job. I have a ton of bushes and have not had any work done on them until since I had bought my home. They pretty well line the entire house. I don't have a big house or yard but they were in dire need of being cut back. Cut all the bushes back and pulled the weeds. He had come out on Thanksgiving day. He called and said he didn't have anything going on until dinner and asked if I minded if he came and worked. It was a tremendous amount of work. He got an A for overall. He mapped out the bushes and wrote down what they are for me. He was educated enough to know what kind of bushes I had and gave me a detailed plot of them. My father is who had the green thumb and it was cool that this young man took time to tell me what I had. He even removed some bushes that was crowding others.

They know what they are doing. They are available after the planting if you have questions. They are helpful, and dependable. We respect this local company and would use them again.

They arrived on time and completed the job in a very professional manner

They arrived early (they called frst) and worked until the job was done. They planted 18 shrubs for me and hand dug each hole. The left NO MESS, and they hauled away the sod. I will use them again and again!

They have quality products. They are not comparable, because they are actually below cost. They are professional and punctual. I will continue to buy from them in the future.