Big Rock Landscape

unknown

His professional manner and friendly personality sold me almost instantly. He discussed options with me through the planning process as if we were old friends and helped to assure we didn't make mistakes conqering more than we needed. Not only did he not and quot;up-selland quot; me, he actually talked me out of some of my plans...convincing me that it would be more than would suit me property and I wouldn't benefit from it. His price was very competitive (I received 3 quotes) and the estimate was delivered to me via e-mail within 2 days and was very detailed. After selecting him to complete the job we set a date to start of 2weeks out and he arrived promptly the night before to drop off some equipment and meet with me prior to starting work. He stated he felt it would be easier for me to chat with me at 7pm than to interrupt my morning routine as I got ready for work! So considerate!!!! He began work promptly the next morning with his team of 2 other men. All were very professional and extremely friendly. At the end of each day the only evidence of thier presence was the completed work and material neatly kept for the next day. Not once did I find tools strewn about or garbage. The job was completed ahead of schedule and at no extra charge he mowed and trimmed my lawn with his commercial equipment. My completed backyard is so much better than I ever imagined! I still am finding little tweaks and surprises that Thurman did that I love! The natural stone that he used is beautiful and some are massive, i've never seen a patio or wall this gorgeous! I was so pleased with his work that I hired him to begin maintaining my lawn and plowing for me in the winter and i've yet to have a complaint. I wish all contractors were this wonderful!

How did it go overall? From my point of view - badly! The backyard certainly looks much better than it did before, but I feel that I was really taken to the cleaners, so to speak. I have the following complaints:1. The flowers/plants they chose, as I said, were not the correct ones. Some of them died immediately, some of them never did bloom and some of them are so huge they have grown into the size of trees--obviously not meant for a small garden. Mr. Wilder was correct--he knew nothing about choosing plants. How could a landscape owner/designer know nothing about which plants to choose for someone's garden? He also told me that he had driven to White River Junction to obtain some of the plants and that he had to pay over $200 for them, charging me that, of course, as well as gas and mileage for the trip. I hope to God it's not true because those are the very flowers that never bloomed; I believe because he planted them in the wrong place.2. As he was working, Mr. Wilder kept saying he would do this or that, e.g., he promised to prune our lilac tree and our yew tree. By the time he got to those 2 jobs at the end, he was in such a rush to get back to his mowing jobs he gave them only a cursory trimming and yet still charged us $50 each for a full trimming. By my estimate, he spent 1 minute on the lilac tree and 2 minutes on the yew tree because he was so eager to get in his truck and drive away. 3. By the time they got to the final day, they were being incredibly fast and thus sloppy in their work. As I already pointed out, they spilled cement on our lawn in at least 2 places while putting up fence posts--pools of cement and what were we to do about it after they had already hardened? There were small piles of junk that they were supposed to dispose of that, again because of their haste to get out of here, they missed. They used, and then took with them, our rake which was a really good one. The one they replaced it with was not a really good one so we were, basically, out a really good rake through no fault of our own (to say nothing of our lawn chair which was broken by his helper and hidden in the garage so we wouldn't find it until they had left). There is a small area between our land and our and quot;backand quot; neighbor's land which had gotten full of weeds and fallen tree branches. Mr. Wilder had promised us that he would clear that area out as part of working in the back area before he left. Of course when he was rushing to get out of here on his last day, he told me he had never said anything at all about cleaning out that area, so it never got done. I have a small list of things that never got done, but not surprisingly, his estimate the first day of $5,000 for the full job managed to jump to $8,000 by the end of the few days that he did spend with us even though a lot of what he said he would do he didn't. 4. The most egregious thing of all was that the yellow piece of paper, which was supposed to take the place of the written estimate, never made another appearance. The last day Mr. Wilder was here he kept telling me he would sit down with me and showo me the written record he had of everything he did, everything he bought, everything that had transpired, etc., but that never happened. Finally, when he was all packed up and told me he was leaving and demanded to be paid, I asked again about a written record I could look at so I knew what I was paying for,especially since the price had changed from $5,000 to $8,000. I wanted to know why or how. At that time he promised me he would drop it off the next morning when he dropped off a replacement rake that he owed us thanks to his helper not being able to find the one he had and quot;borrowed.and quot; I said that would be all right as long as I got the written record the next day. I found the rake sitting on my deck the next morning but no record. So I called Mr. Wilder. He was very belligerant when I brought up the subject, actually accusing me of having buyer's remorse and just being sorry that I had spent so much money. I told him he had no idea how much money I intended to spend. And that he was on the wrong track. I had remorse but not about that--the remorse I had was remorse about getting involved with him and I told him that he absolutely could not use me as a reference nor could he use any pictures from my job to post on his website, which he had wanted to do. I now know that the biggest mistake I made was in letting him begin the job without demanding a written estimate from him. When I told him after the job, on the phone, that I wanted to know what I had paid him for, that I wanted to see things written down such as and quot;so many bags of this and so many bags of that...and quot; he laughed at me on the phone and said no one did business like that with him. It took too much time and too much trouble to write things down like that and he wasn't going to go back over the job then and write down what he had done now that the job was over. Did I think he had that kind of time? I felt very bad that someone local had treated me in such a way but he did teach me a very valuable lesson.