S & G Materials

We called S & G and ordered 10 tons of topsoil to be delivered to our garden at our home, the 1st tip off that this would be a nightmare experience was the woman who answers the phone didn't seem to have a clue what was going on. Nice enough, but very uninformed. We were told we would receive a call before the driver came with a truck full of dirt, but that call never came. Instead, a driver showed up randomly yesterday with a huge load. The driver, not employed by S & G, was very very nice and helpful. He was able to back right up into the garden and his aim was SPOT ON! As we were raking out the dirt we noticed a considerable amount of clay in the soil, but thought maybe it was just an off-patch and kept raking. After several hours we realized it wasn't just a random spot that was bad, it was the entire load. And raking it is not the word I'd use either... shovel? The load was obviously never screened, period. There were bolders of clay we have to remove by hand altogether. It was a nightmare. This photo shows the bolders we removed by hand the 1st 2 hours of attempting to spread out the dirt. The white thing in the photo is an old tire for size reference. http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/2273/img5961m.jpg That grey dirt behind the pile? That's S & G's version of topsoil. The ACTUAL black dirt on the left is purchased topsoil we were going to blend in before we realized the entire 10 tons of the delivered dirt was unusable as it was. After calling an experienced professional gardener this morning to come and look at the garden, our suspicions were confirmed that what we received would not be considered topsoil under ANY condition. We called to speak to the company to see if we happened to have gotten someone else's load and was transfered to a supervisor who, without ever asking to see the photos we had taken or listen to our actual complaint, kept saying, "well no one ELSE complained about it." Well you're receiving a complaint now! He never once asked to come see what we were referring to, I believe because he honestly didn't care. The guy was near impossible to deal with and ONLY started to understand the severity of the situation when we informed him we had paid for a product and the quality of that product was so poor we would end up in small claims if there was not a resolution provided. It was only after realizing we were not playing around that this supervisor reluctantly agreed to send over some compost (it was suppose to be 2 tons but it ended up being far, far less, more like 1/2 that amount) to help amend the soil. So once again we get to spend an afternoon trying to make good with an inferior product. Thanks S & G. The guy also said they sold already-amended soil for gardens... funny, that's the 1st we're hearing about any such option! The women we spoke with mentioned no such thing when we said we needed topsoil for our garden. What we received was NOT topsoil, it was, at best, fill dirt. Never, ever, ever, ever again will we do business with S & G. It was a disaster. The ONLY good thing to come from the transaction was meeting the 2 drivers not employed by S & G, those guys were great! We tipped them both, they did such a good job. But avoid S & G at all costs, even with the compost it was still HOURS of work that did not need to happen. You'd be better off going to Lowes and buying topsoil by the bag, at least then you won't be left with a massive unmovable pile of fill dirt where your garden should be.