Brooks Landscaping

We called Ryan for an estimate for a waterfall feature. He is a young guy starting to develop his business so we thought we would help him out. He was to build a three level waterfall in our back yard. My husband helped the small team of 2 or 3 to move heavy stones and rocks with his tractor. It was only to take a few days and ended up taking a month because he didn't show up when he was supposed to. I paid him in cash 50% up front and the rest prior to completion because he wanted to take his wife to the shore for labor day. He promised to come back and finish which he did. The waterfall was completed and I went and bought the plants to put around the feature. I had a few extra and gave them to him. My husband and I felt we were very generous to him even though we were not overly pleased with his work. We then closed the feature for the winter and when we opened it In the spring the pump didn't want to run. We could Ryan several times and sent multiple emails - he finally responded and said he would stop over. I did not get to run the feature at all last year because he would not come to look at it. I thought perhaps the pump should be under warranty since he charged us big dollars for it. We then finally saw him at a home show in 2012 and he completely ignored my husband and I. I then emailed him multiple more times and he ignored us again. We were able to catch him at the Hanover show and he promised to stop out that week. Well here it is 6 weeks later no call or visit. What really steams me is he has a picture of our water feature on his website and never tried to satisfied us or asked if he could use the pic. This young guy may have some talent but being a good business man is not one of his talents. I would not recommend him for anything. He is untrustworthy and will take your money and run. All he would have to do is correct our issue - we even offered him money to come fix the problem. I may even pursue this further. It is not right to be taken advantage of.

We are very disappointed with him. I think we had him for an estimate, maybe three years ago, and then, when we followed up, we saw that he was on the internet and had a webpage. We haven’t heard from him since he gave us a free estimate. He didn’t even have the courtesy to call us back. I think he owed us the courtesy of a call back even if he wasn’t interested in doing the work. We were very disappointed with that.

At the time, it was R&J Landscaping. The brothers gave me an estimate, which I thought was a little expensive but they seemed like nice kids starting out. They came and did the work. We thought there would be more plants, etc for that amount of money. They also did lighting which amounted to plastic lights. They came after and watered a few times, then we didn't see them again. We had plants die over the seasons but we had a one year warranty on them. I phoned, no answer. I then emailed Ryan and he wrote back and said he would "stop by when he had time". That was in May 2010. I emailed throughout the Summer and to date he has not come to replace the plants. I also told him that the lights did not work and that we wanted them fixed. For the amount of money we spent, and of course he wanted cash, we are not happy.