All American Landscape & Masonry

I have used All American Landscaping for several years now and the quality of work and professionalism has exceeded every expectation. The owner, Tom O'Connor is responsive to my inquiries and has always presented as a polite and professional businessman. Quotes are timely, fair and honored as written. I highly recommend All American Landscaping for any outdoor living project, yard maintenance, lawn mowing, landscaping and tree/shrub/flower garden plantings. I had about 10 trees planted last year and one tree got a fungus and died. Tom replaced it without question. It is hard to find a business these days that would do the same. Lisa

The end product was perfect. The owner, Tom oconnor, just yesterday went to my moms house and gave it a free mow after he found out that my father recently passed away. True professional who cares.

I signed the contract and provided a deposit on April 26, 2013. My husband and I told Tom we needed it completed by Memorial Day weekend. He said no problem. After a couple of weeks, he hadn't started, so my husband called and said 'Please don't rip up our yard unless you are sure you will be done by Memorial Day weekend. We are having lots of guests that weekend and need the yard.' Tom said no problem. Soon afterwards, Tom and his crew came and ripped up the old walkway and patio and dug deep a deep hole and trench for the patio and walkway. The day AFTER he ripped up the yard, he told us that the costs of the stone increased and it would cost us another $250. We said no, we have a signed contract, so we don't have to pay any more. Tom countered that the price increase was not his fault, and he is giving us a deal because he is only charging us 'cost' on the increase. We spent 30 minutes on the phone trying to resolve our dispute. I said any judge would side with me because you have to honor the contract. Tom said 'well, legally that's true, but the cost increase is not my fault.' So Tom would not back down, and my options were to either pay it, or wait for my day in small claims court - which would likely take months and mean no use of my back yard all summer. So strike number 1: he doesn't honor the contract price. If he had told us about the price increase before he ripped up the yard, I could have taken my business elsewhere. But conveniently for him, he waited until the day after he stared the job to inform us of the increase. Then he did not finish the job by Memorial Day weekend. He cited weather interfered with the schedule. I work from home most days, and I can assure you that there were many nice days that no one showed up. He was well aware of our request: We told Tom when we signed the contract in April, and again around May 10th - We need the yard for Memorial Day weekend. So we ended up having a house full of people for a long weekend, plus 3 dogs, and no usable yard. It was a deep hole. Strike 2. Part of the contract was to extend our above-ground downspouts the length of the walkway. We expected he would use the same type of downspout material that was already there - the kind you see at Home Depot and is on pretty much every house you see. Instead, he used neon green pvc piping that is used for underground downspouts. Who would put ugly PVC pipes on our brand new walkway that cost over $1000? My husband called and asked Tom to use the standard downspout material instead. Tom said no. Strike 3. Luckily, Tom used the same ugly material on my neighbor's downspout at the same time, and my neighbor complained too. So after both complaints, Tom replaced the material with the appropriate materials (which are very inexpensive, by the way, so I don't see why he just didn't use them in the first place). However, they were installed incorrectly and leaked. After another phone call, they fixed that too. On June 10th, he emailed me a final invoice dated May 13th. He hadn't yet finished the job so I didn't pay. At the end of June, he came back and finished what was left. In the meantime, my husband had already filled in the sink hole that appeared over the underground downspout Tom installed, reseeded the lawn himself, and reconfigured the above-ground downspout correctly. At that point, it was just easier to do those things ourselves than to ask Tom. On the upside, I can say that the pavers look very nice. It's only been a couple of months since they were installed, but so far they are fine. Also, Tom gives a very good first impression - he is well dressed, polite, and seems knowledgeable about pavers. But not honoring the agreed-upon price after the contract was signed and the 50% deposit was taken is unacceptable. Its his job to make sure his costs are accurate and up-to-date before quoting a job. And if the costs go up, he can complain to his supplier, not ask his customers to pay more than they agreed to. REBUTTAL TO PROVIDER RESPONSE: Thanks for your response Tom. Your response about weather is what I expected you would say. I still have the email correspondence between my husband and you on May 13th; my husband asked you not to start until after Memorial Day weekend since he was concerned about your ability to finish the job by then, and it was so important to us to have a usable yard that weekend. Your email response to him was that you expected to have it finished by the end of the following week. But now you say 'weather can be a negative factor, especially in the spring'. Well if you knew that then, you should have taken the safer route and delayed the demolition of our yard until after Memorial Day, as my husband suggested. We trusted your judgment and past experience of working towards an important customer deadline in springtime. For the record, you missed the deadline by a couple of weeks, not days. Your response to using the inappropriate downspout material doesn't make any sense. The fact that our neighbors had 'several drains hooked up' and possibly required extra water capacity doesn't have any impact on us. You extended only one downspout for us, so there was never a need for extra capacity downspouts on our house. As you know, you never discussed the topic of extra capacity for water with us, since it didn't apply. When we first asked you to change our downspout to the more common material, your answer should have been 'sure, no problem'. Not wait to see what the neighbors want on their house. Last, you state price increases occur if there is a change in the project. The two extra services added to the contract are not in dispute, and we gladly paid for them. You are well aware of the main complaint: you are not within your right to charge us extra for your material cost increases after we agreed to an original price. Nothing in the contract language allowed for that. I think its awful that you are trying to mislead Angie's List viewers that any price increase is only due to additional services. When I originally pushed back on the price increase in May, you were adamant that it was within your right to pass along your cost increase to customers even after you quoted the job, we signed the contract, and you started the job. Based on your intentionally misleading response, I guess you are not so sure of that now. I'm posting your proposal for the increase to Angie's List viewers: the first item is the cost increase in dispute, and the other items were the unrelated additional services that are not in dispute. Strike 4: he gives misleading answers.