Ironwood Tree Service

We signed a contract with Sean from Ironwood Tree Service in March, 2019 to have a fully-mature silver maple tree removed from our back yard. When I met Sean he seemed very knowledgeable and understanding of our problems, and the price he quoted was reasonable and not much different from other companies we contacted. So far, so good. The tree was cut down in mid-March, and while I was happy that the tree was gone I was not so pleased with the condition my lawn was left in. The ground was wet and as such my lawn was torn up significantly. I understand that the contractor can’t control the weather, but since it was not even the official start of spring yet maybe they could have waited for a drier day since they were probably not too busy at this time. Nevertheless the tree was gone now, and I was left with a stump at least a foot tall that according to the contract would be ground later in the spring. Later that night Sean called me directly and asked when he could get the payment from us. I was a little taken aback since most contractors will not request payment until the job is complete, and the stump grinding was not done yet. At the time my wife and I were out of the house and would not be home until later that night. When I told Sean he could meet us the next day or the following Monday to get his payment I could hear the disappointment in his voice, and then he told me that he would be willing to stop by as late as possible to get the check that night. Since I don’t want anyone ringing our doorbell at midnight, we changed our plans and rushed home to meet Sean. As of this point my warning bells were starting to go off. For the next couple of months I woke up every morning and had to look at that ugly stump in my back yard, and while the date for grinding it didn’t matter to me, I did want to get a couple of days’ notice so that we could make sure that we were home when he stopped by. Did I mention that Sean doesn’t actually have a stump grinder? As it turns out he rents one when he needs it so that he can get several grinding jobs done on the same day to make the rental more worthwhile. Once again my warning bells were going off as I wondered if he was going to rush through my job to get to the next one as soon as possible. Finally at the beginning of May Sean called me out of the blue and told me that he would be arriving at my home in a few minutes to grind the stump (so much for a couple days’ heads-up). After several hours of work (where I personally observed Sean tip the grinder over on its side in my yard), the job was done. What can I say? I was shocked at what I saw. There was a mountain of wood savings in my yard several feet high, not to mention the holes dug up everywhere. To this day my back yard looks like a World War I battlefield. I know much of this couldn’t be helped due to the nature of the job, but it would have been nice if it could have been explained to me that my yard would be damaged as bad as it was and that we would have such a pile of grindings so that at least I could have made some plans for what to do after the stump was ground. When Sean told me he was done I asked him if there was any way he could help me clean up the monstrous mess in the yard, but he told me that he was too busy and he would have a landscaping service that he worked with in the past contact me. As it turns out I never received a call from any landscaping company, and when I tried contacting Sean several days after grinding the stump to ask for an update I had to leave a message which he never returned. Well it is nearly a month after the stump has been ground, and my wife and I (who are not exactly young, strong kids) have been doing what we can to clean up our yard. The wood shavings and chips from the stump and roots not only are above ground but extend several inches below the surface of the yard, and they need to all get out of there if we have any hope of trying to grow grass in the damaged areas. After finally getting all of the chips and shavings off of the surface we were horrified to find out that the stump is barely below ground level, and there are several roots and parts of the stump that are still sticking above ground level. We have been trying to call and email Sean to let him know that there is still work to be done, but he will not answer us. I guess Sean feels that once he got the check for grinding the stump he doesn’t need to have any further contact with us. Now that it appears that Sean is unwilling to help us any further I have contacted several other tree/stump removal services to finish the job he left incomplete, and these services confirmed that Sean completely botched the job on our stump removal. The other services also mentioned that the stump should never have been left that high to begin with (apparently the stump should be cut so that it is as close to the ground as possible before the grinding is begun), and while it is unfortunate that we have to pay a second time to have the grinding finished correctly, they have heard of this happening before. It is a shame that Sean does not feel that he needs to rely on repeat business since there is quite a bit of tree removal and landscaping that our yard needs, but I guess I can take comfort in the fact that he will not be doing any of it.