Eastside Tree Works

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I knew I needed some tree work but wanted tree experts to come review my entire, quite large and extensively-planted yard. I figured they would see things that I wasn’t aware of, that may need attention. I contacted three A-rated firms on Angie’s List. Two of the estimators are ISA-certified arborists. I decided to go with ETW for several reasons. 1) ETW schedules a full hour for Benjamin to do an estimate. He did a thorough walk-through of my yard, not just the items that I wanted him to look at. He answered all my questions patiently, thoughtfully and thoroughly. I felt he was genuinely interested in addressing the needs of my yard, and my concerns. Benjamin is an ISA-certified arborist, and prior to working as an estimator, had spent 8 years doing actual tree work. 2) Only Benjamin discovered the mushrooms growing at the base of the old, very large bigleaf maple tree in my backyard. He said this indicated rot in the trunk. He checked out the tree, showing me the rot. He said that at some point the tree would fall, but there was no way of knowing when. He gave me two options: to thin the tree to relieve weight pressure on the trunk, or to remove the tree altogether. 3) Only Benjamin told me that it was not healthy to cut back branches mid-way. This invites disease to move in to the tree. The healthiest for the tree is to remove branches at the trunk. Both the other tree services recommended cutting off branches part way, on two different trees. 4) ETW keeps all their crews employed year round, and provides benefits. I wanted to support this. 5) ETW has a great rep on Angie’s List. All the work was completed per the contract. Graciously, ETW made an exception for me, to keep separate several pieces of wood that my father wanted to make into bowls. (ETW's arrangement with the wood hauling firm is that it gets all the wood, which is fair, since that's what makes it worth their while to get the wood, which they sell for firewood.) I was very grateful for this exception. I was home during much of the work. The crews were very nice and careful with my landscaping. There was no damage to buildings, and minor damage to surrounding plants. John who works for one of the wood haulers did a superb clean up job, and was incredibly polite. The process did not go nearly as smoothly as I had expected. There were a lot of communication problems. I was told repeatedly by Benjamin and the crew, that the process on my job was highly unusual, and not at all representative of ETW’s typical process. Benjamin was good at communicating with me throughout the process, making an effort to get the job done on time (I had a hard deadline). The experience was a frustrating one, and not only for me. ETW offered me an additional discount to make up for all the hassles. They did not have to do this, and I commend them on this level of customer service and wanting to ensure customer satisfaction. The price noted above is the original contract price, which includes a 10% Angie's List discount - that's a good deal! A few lessons I learned from this experience: 1. Get absolutely everything you agreed to, written out clearly in the contract. This will help to avoid misunderstandings and miscommunication. It also helps when memory fails. :o) 2. If you have a big job, have the crew start first thing in the morning. If you get scheduled or rescheduled for an afternoon slot, refuse it and insist on an early morning slot—ideally the first job of the day. Unless you want to have the job done on multiple days. 3. Don’t expect a low-impact tree removal to not harm your plants. It doesn’t mean no-impact. Removing a huge tree in the middle of a fully landscaped yard is bound to have some impact on your landscaping. 4. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Did the company do a good job? Did they do what they said they would do? Did they listen to you? Did they make an effort to address any issues, and make things right? If yes to these, then call it a wrap and be happy. There are a couple of unexpectedly good things that came out of hiring ETW: 1. The bigleaf maple tree was quite diseased, much more than Benjamin had thought from only seeing the outside of the trunk. So it was good that it was removed vs. potentially falling down and causing property and possibly personal injury. I feel relief, as well as gratitude to Benjamin for noticing the rot in the first place. 2. Due to ETW not quite completing the job on time, my father was present when the bottom portion of the bigleaf maple trunk was sawn apart. (The pieces he wanted were already set aside.) He saw markings in the wood that he really liked, and was able to get a couple more pieces to take home, pleasing him greatly.

This was the slickest work I have seen. This crew was so professional and did everything with the utmost thoughtto the employee safety during the work and the treatment of the family home.They did all this is about 6 hours including cleanup. The wood was hauled away a few days later very promptly.I highly recommend this company. They are exactly the kind of company you want working at your home.I had a new 12 ft awning built within a foot of the pine to be removed and they protected it by zip liningALL WOOD TO FRONT DRIVEWAY. Very careful about your home.

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Very well. Will have them for future work.

Did a great job and completed the work in a timely mater.

They did a good job of removing the dead tree but left three large pieces of trunk. They have to grind the stump so I presume they will take care of the trunk pieces then. They did a very good job cutting away branches from a dead tree. The foreman answered all my questions. They did a good job pruning a tree that was over grown onto my roof. However, they did not prune branches of two other trees that are very close to my house. I know they pruned the trees but when my wife asked me to show the pruning I found it difficult to show her. What is absolutely unforgivable is that they moved some very heavy patio furniture and did not put it back. I called the office to tell them they have to put the furniture back. So far no results. I originally gave them high marks but now I feel they let me down.

They did what they promised to do while being efficient, accommodating and friendly. My only problem was that they didn't put a very heavy piece of furniture back where it belonged. I called and they are coming back out to move it. I think they should have pruned a bit more of my tree, but they are the experts. They also left without telling me so I didn't have a chance to inspect the job.

The crew who did the work made some mistakes, but the owner contacted me and I am completely satisfied.

I called Eastside Tree Works and an Arborist came out the same day and gave me an estimate for the removal of the tree and the Arborvitae An appointment for the removal was set for a week later. The tree was taken down and the arborvitae was removed. The yard and side walks were cleaner when they left then they were when they arrived .The wood was removed two days later. The stumps were ground to below ground level a little over a week later (the rain soaker delayed it a bit) I mentioned to Dave that we will be replanting the Arborvitae and he made sure that he went down deep enough to make replanting an easy job. I would definitely recommend Eastside Tree Works and will used them again as future needs arise.

Trimming of 12 trees, and removing one. Quote was almost double everyone else from Angie's list and Glen was Very pushy. We wanted an estimate only and he tried over 3x to get us to sign despite making it clear we only wanted an estimate and wouldn't't be signing anything without discussing with my husband. Also appeared to have his Son with him during this process. Overall was disappointed despite the other reviews. Also left markings all over our trees that had jumped the gun thinking was paint and turned out to be ribbons stapled to the trees. I don't believe they should have been left on the trees as none of the other companies have done that. Also claimed was giving us an extra discount on top of the Angie's List coupon yet once again being almost double EVERY other company on here.

We've been thinking about getting a couple of our trees trimmed as they were rubbing against a new fence we recently added to our yard. A sales guy from this company knocked on our door and said that they were doing a job in the neighborhood in a couple of days and looking for more work while they were in the area. He asked if an estimator could spin by the next day to talk to us, so I said yes. Right on time, the estimator showed up and gave us a quote. He explained that it was a small job, but he would send his entire crew (5 people) over and knock it out in 90 minutes. He asked for flexibility around the schedule, basically saying and quot;you don't have to be home, and when we are in the area doing a bigger job within the next two weeks we'll spin by and knock this out. You don't need to pay until the work is done.and quot; That all sounded good to me, and since they had a good grade on Angie's List I decided to use them. I have no idea if I over paid or got a good deal since I didn't do any comparison shopping. Turns out they showed up the next day. They did a great job and cleaned up nicely afterwards. Very professional. I'm still waiting for the bill to pay.

I had a dilemma of sorts in regards to my very large fir tree (over 100 ft.) that needed to be trimmed or taken down. I was leaning on taking it down because it straddled right on the property line of me and my neighbor. It was inundating me and him with large pine cones so I decided to have three companies take a look at it. Eastside came in at the lowest bid by far, and they didn't try to B.S. me about the tree NEEDING to be taken down. I have had other companies give me doomsday scenarios and while I am a realist, I don't appreciate being "scared straight." Eastside said the tree was in good shape but it was up to me whether or not I wanted it removed. I feel for the price they quoted me, it was better to take it down. I also had trim work done on two other large fir trees and overall they did a great job. The crew that came out were very professional and even asked me when they were trimming the other two if I was satisfied with the amount taken off while the worker was still high in one of the trees. I have hired other tree companies and these guys were the best by far. They took most of the tree materials the same day but left a few large sections to be taken by what I am assuming is a "regular guy" to pick up the remaining pieces for his firewood collection. It took about a week for the guy to haul everything away and to be fair, it states on the bill that if the materials are not hauled away within 7 days to call the company and they would make the necessary accommodations. So, if you have a lot of work done and need to have the materials hauled away quickly, make sure you make arraignments with them before the work has been started. My only concern regarding this arraignment is what if the guy coming to haul the remaining materials got hurt on my property, is he under or part of the insured/bonding umbrella? Again, I am assuming that this guy was not employed by the company. Overall, these guys were great and I would hire them back for any other tree work.

An arborist came out and later over the phone gave me a bid. He said he could have a crew out the next day. Unfortunately The Big Snow arrived and my project was pushed back. I called them several times to ask when they'd be coming and the reply was always that they were still dealing with emergency tree issues. In January I called the arborist from Eastside Tree Service and he told me that the company had decided that they couldn't do the work. Noone had ever contacted me.I then called the office and spoke with Matt. I said that I had chosen them because of the excellent revues they'd received on Angie's List as well as the good price they had given me. They had no real explanation as to why they never let me know that they wouldn't do the job. If they felt that their arborist had given me too low a bid why didn't they call me up to discuss that? I told them this was not good business and reminded them that I'd gotten their name from Angie's List. Matt called me right back and said a crew would be out to do the work that week. They did come out. They did cut down my trees, though they did leave some mighty tall stumps. The head crew person said that I'd be receiving a bill from the office. I have not received a bill yet. I called up the office and left a message last Monday(Jan31) asking them to send me my bill. A week has gone by and noone has called me.

The estimater was prompt and professional. They provided an estimate prior to leaving and followed up the next day. We accepted the bid and they completed the job on the date that we requested. Billing was accurate and timely.

I called and spoke to Matt about 9am. He indicated cat rescue was new for him, but that part of his business was starting to boom. He indicated he'd pull some guys from a site since my cat had been stuck for more than 36 hours. He took my name, address, and the location of the tree (I was at work) and said his guys would call when they got there. I was so happy he agreed to do the work even though my neighbors were out of town and not around to ask permission. They called at 11:50 and said they were en route. I called at 12:30 and they were still 5 minutes out (probably Eastside traffic). But they got there, harnessed, climbed up and by 1:15 my cat was out of the tree.

Our neighbors requested a bid from this company. We asked the arborist to look at our fir tree, which worried us based on previous consultations with other companies. Their arborist explained that the root ball had been compromised years before when the house was built. We decided to have the tree removed. The crew came about a week later. Five men worked all day removing the tree in small chunks. There was some damage to the lawn below the tree from chunks of tree trunk being dropped on it, but we expected that. About four days after the tree was down, a sub-contractor came to split the logs and remove all of the wood from the backyard. This took three days because of the amount of wood (7-8 cords of wood) and the location (backyard with average access). The crew was courteous and careful at all times. They took great care to cut the trunk into smaller than average chunks to drop into the yard because of their concern that the logs might roll into the house. My deck is less than five feet from the base of the tree, and not one piece of wood fell on the deck.The pruning the crew did on my ornamental trees is beautiful. The plum tree is now my favorite plant in my entire yard.

It was the first time I used them. They were great. They came out twice to do different estimates. When the people were actually doing the work here, they were pretty flexible. I thought that they were a good company to work with. I think they came on time. They charged me about $500. I will use them in the future.

I will use them again. They offered to finish doing some stump grinding and I will be taking them up on that.

I have rodents in my attic - in part due to the overhang of trees over my roof. Matt came the same day I called for an estimate and looked at the overhang project as well as a tree removal and more cosmetic project. I decided to get all three projects done at the same time - with some cost savings for getting it all done together. Four workers came on time and on the day agreed upon. They were all polite, appreciative of the job and took an interest in the project and my opinions. I also had them set aside some of the branches that would normally have been chipped - I had curly willow branches that I advertised on Craig's list and the crew was helpful in setting them off to the side for others to come collect. I was most impressed when at the end of the job EACH of the four workers came up to me and thanked me for hiring them for the job.

We had a large fir tree between our house and the neighbors - very close quarters. The crew managed to cut the tree down without causing any damage to the fence or our plants. We did have to remove a couple of plants before but there were still plenty that were located very close to the tree. The remaining trees were thinned and cleaned up - they look great! There was minimal mess left behind since the crew took the time to really clean up as much as they could (in the pouring rain). The crew was extremely professional and pleasant to deal with. We would certainly hire this company again.

I have to remove a tree stump for my house addition project so I called several tree services for a quote, either no one anwsering my phone call or the job was too small. When I talked to Matt he really listened to me about the work and he explained to me very professionally on how they work on such job to make sure no damage for underground utility lines. His quote is very resonable. I anticipated this can take a week to get them on site but it came out that Jim called me next day and he was very professional and did excellent job to remove the stump completely. Jim cleaned up the site after the job is done. I will definitely use them again.

I contacted Matt and that same afternoon he had Steve come and take a look at the project. They came back a couple days later and took down the trees. I could not believe how good they left the yard! Very professional and clean. The next week they had the stumps grinded down and a few days later someone came and took all the wood away. We are so pleased with everything. They communicated wonderfully and we liked all of the people that came to our house to do the work. We will call them again!!

Eastside Tree Works sent 4 men to cut down, limb and then chip up 7 trees. This was not an easy job! Their crew was polite, skilled and concerned about the best results for our yard. They also brought us free chips, which we really needed to fill in a swampy area. They went out of their way to bring us an extra load - very helpful.