MANCERA BROTHERS LANDSCAPING

unknown

I needed some work done quickly, they were able to complete the work in two days.  The estimate was itemized and sent quickly. Bottom line, I would hire them again to remove bushes and yard waste.

They very not very punctual. Had to reschedule twice. Also, if I had not been home, they would not have cleaned some of the maple tree seeds from the front yard. I had to make them do that. They were in a rush to complete the work.
 The only reason I can think of is because I was doing a one time clean up instead of a monthly service. I still have some of the grass in between the concrete slabs which they did not remove.

unknown

Very professional and I would have continued to use this company, but his prices were a little high compared to my current landscaper.

It was a little expensive for me. They were very responsive and no complaints. Every time that I called they addressed any issue that I had.

Finding a reliable landscaper was tricky because I live 300 miles from the inherited house. I found Mancera Brothers on Angie's List. Whenever I went to Chicago to work on the house, the lawn and shrubbery always looked clean. Mancera was the second landscaper with whom I worked on the house, and I was favorably impressed by their prices. My realtor said Mancera was very reasonable and in fact planned to ask them if they covered the area in which she lived. Doro communicated promptly via email and was always courteous on the phone.

He and his crew did a fabulous job! His price was very fair.  Doroteo Mancera promptly answered my call for a free estimate and came out the next day. He was very professional, courteous and knowledgeable  Due to rain, they could not come out the scheduled day, but came the next day. He and his crew did an impeccable job,  I am considering him for snow removal as well!

They do a good job, I would recommend them.

I pay $80-$90 a month and more for the extra things like spring clean up & fertilizing.  The actual work that they did was pretty good.  I like the work that they did.  There was only really one time, they had a free weed killer or vegetation killer on my patio and it was actually put too close to my neighbor's yard, so it stripped out their grass.  My neighbor called them about it and they came in & replaced it by putting a new sod in it.  The only problem I had was that it was really hard to communicate with them because the billing was confusing and the invoice wasn't clear.  The ink was spilled.  It was a broken English communication while talking with them and writing, so it was very hard to ask questions and get things in writing.  They didn't seem to be professional.

He is prompt in returning calls and sending the invoices.  His prices are fair also. I recommend him for monthly maintenance.

We used Mancera Brothers Landscaping for fall clean up and for some work on our yard and garden in June. It turned out the both decisions to use them was a mistake. Let?s start with fall.
Let?s start with Fall clean up. We had them come out to clean up the leaves that fell into our front and back yards. They did this well enough, however they didn?t stop there. They took a weed whacker to trim down some plants in front and back which would grow back in the Spring. At first we thought this was a good idea and left them to their own devices thinking they knew what they were doing. Well, that was a mistake. They whacked EVERYTHING. They whacked rose bushes. They whacked all plants we had in pots. If it was a plant they whacked it. By the time we realized they were indiscriminately whacking everything it was too late to stop them. However, we still thought that they knew what they were doing, being landscape ?experts? and all, that we brought them back for work in the Spring/Summer.
Some of the work we had them do in the Spring/Summer was good, but there was enough bad that we had to spend weeks fixing the problems. Our garden and lawn had more weeds after Mancera Brothers than in any of the years prior. The only way we could get them out was to spend several weeks digging them out by hand. We just discovered that the weeds they introduced are now taking over our lawn.
We paid for them to provide premium mulch. We even asked to see a sample of the mulch so we could see what we were supposedly getting. It looked great when they put the mulch down, but after the first rain most of the color washed off. It was then that we saw that the mulch we got was actually chopped up construction material. Yes?bits of chopped up painted furniture and old varnished hardwood flooring. There was nothing premium about this. When we brought this up to Doro Mancera he played dumb and insisted that this was exactly what he show us and we approved. It was not.
We had them dethatch the yard and put seed down in the bare spots. Unfortunately, he used seed for a different type of grass than the grass we already had in place. Now we have a patchy lawn because of the two different types of grass growing.
We asked Doro to come back and fix some of his work. He started doing work that was not requested and tried to charge us for 1.5 hours times the number of people in his crew of work time when his crew was only here for 35 minutes. Basically, he was making sure to up the bill as much as he could.
I highly recommend AGAINST using Mancera Brothers Landscaping. Their work is shoddy and you will be fixing things after them. If you ever ask for clarification or try to confront them they play dumb to get out of it. If you use them you should pay close attention to the bill and each line item in it.

I hesitate to write this review because I appreciate small businesses and I do not want to hurt this business. BUT at the same time I feel improvement is needed and I hope this is constructive and not destructive.  Overall we were not at all pleased with the quality of work and will not use them again.  The price is great but our plants have suffered. I did not feel that Tony listened to what we wanted.  We have a lot of plants in our yard and I would expect more knowledge on how to care for them than was shown.  For example we had a patch of daffodils that were finished with bloom. They were ALL pulled out and I am not sure if they will rebloom next year or not. I don't know what happened there.  Generally I felt our plants were hacked up with a weed whacker and I was embarrassed at the state of our yard when they left.

They have pricing comparable to other places. They have great customer service which keeps me coming back. They listen and are willing to do what you want them to do. It's nice, also, to deal with the owner directly.

I will provide a detailed account when this traumatic experience comes to a close.

unknown

My only complaint is that Doro, the owner, is a little over the top. This comes out with his guys. They were verging on pushy. The work is good though.

We had contact Doro about bush trimming previously.  We did not use him at that time, but the person we did was not going to be able to do the trim and build us the planter.  Doro said he could, and came out to give an estimater. It was reasonable, and we scheduled a day for him to come the following week.  I waited an hour, no one showed up.  I called, he said there was a mix-up in the schedule, and we rescheduled for two days later.  He called when he was to arrive, said he would not be able to make it, and we rescheduled for two days after that. Doro and his crew arrived on time that day. The rescheduling was a major pain, because we had to keep making arrangements with our neighbors to be able to get into their locked backyard, so we could have their side of the hedge trimmed.

He set one of his workers to work on the hedge, while he began work on the planter.  I realized, after the worker had begun, that he was trimming 2 feet more from the height of the bush than I had asked.  I stopped him, couldn't seem to get him to understand the problem, went and got Doro, and we got the right height.  It did wind up we had a gap, where the hedge was trimmed too much -- but it's a fast growing shrub, and the gap should be gone by next year ...  It took three attempts to get the hedge properly trimmed:  they couldn't seem to get the verticals straight, and then weren't able to get one corner right.

Meanwhile, Doro was working on the planter.  We had timbers of various sizes to use.  I had sketched out the size and construction:  it was to match one already on the property.  Doro thought we should make an adjustment in the height, to better use all of the timbers.  I agreed.  However, when he got to the last layer of timbers, he discovered he had mis-measured, and would need to get a new timber to complete the work.  I was not happy, as now the timbers would not match,  but agreed.  He left to get the new timber.

I waited an hour, he did not return.  I called to find out when he would return, as I needed to get to a meeting.  It wound up he was not intending to return that day.  I stressed we wanted the work completed.  He returned, and finished the planter.  He then wanted to charge me for the new timber.  Since the error was his, I refused.  He was angry, packed up -- and I realized he was taking all the timber that had not been used.  I told him he needed to leave it.  After he left, I realized he had only left three short pieces, and had taken all the rest.

Because of the delays getting the work started, the problems in getting the hedge trimmed properly, the mismeasurement of the materials for the planter, and the dishonesty in taking the leftover timbers, I would not recommend Doro for any work.

We hired them on a continuing basis on the Spring of 2011 and after an entire season of work we are extremely pleased. They are prompt, professional, consistent, and careful. Their price was reasonable. We plan to keep using them for the foreseeable future.

Called Doro to clean up our yard, power-rake the grass, and to mulch all our flower-beds.  This was our first spring in the house, and the beds needed a lot of help.  Doro and team were able to help up the same week, and did a great job cleaning up.  The mulching was good, but was way more effort than they anticipated (and required more mulch) so they did spread it thin in some areas.  All in all a positive experience.

We used them over a year. They were cheap but the billing was unreliable and for more days than I could not remember it snowing. Then after the blizzard, they did not come out until Sunday although all other snow removal services were in the neighborhood by Friday or Saturday. When they finally got here, they just shoved snow around on areas we had already shoveled by hand, they did not do the sides or front to widen the paths already made even though I specifically asked them to do that, and they put snow melt down because there were flurries (we had approved snow melt but not for every time there were a couple of flurries). Then they billed us as if they had done the entire job.

Excellent price and service - Mancera Bros. did an excellent job clearing snow for my company at a very reasonable price of $65 per day. Mancera has us on a list for snow removal for 2" or more of snow - they come without us having to call each time and have done an excellent job clearing snow.

After the Chicago Blizzard dumped over 2' of snow on my lakefront neighborhood, the snow was 3' deep in our alley and against the garages. No private service would plow the entire alley unless for a condo assoc., which we aren't. Seemed pointless to have the garage dug out until the alley was plowed. City first said we'd all have to "pitch in and clear the alleys" ourselves, but then ran a garbage truck w/plow through overnight, piling up even more snow against the garage. I called several services you'd listed. Only Mancera Bros.answered. I spoke to Doro, and he said they could dig out the garage door but would have to wait till late in the day because they were on a distant job. Called to remind them only once. When they were w/in 1/2 hr of my house his bro. Jorge called back for detailed directions. Arrived in early evening--by then the city had sent a Sno-Cat through to compact the snow in which the garbage trucks had left deep ruts & high ridges. Jorge was a bit shocked at first by the scope of the job, but together we figured out where on my property he could redeposit the snow without inconveniencing my neighbors (who have lived through this nightmare and had tried earlier to dig out the alley by hand). He hesitated to quote me $250, but I was delighted to pay it. He had warned he might have to come back next day to finish, but he and his snowblower did the job perfectly within 2 hrs. Because of him, my husband could finally drive home from his offices on the S. Side & Oak Lawn, where he'd had to stay several nights at considerable expense due to both Lake Shore Dr.closure & alley/garage debacle; and I can get my car out of the garage. Highly recommend him and would definitely use Mancera Bros. again (but hope we never need another project this big in our lifetime).

Overpromised and under-delivered. I received a bid for $4,000 for a new walkway and to cover my existing cement porch with stone. However, Doro came back twice with higher prices after he went to purchase the stone. The prices made it 50% more. Ultimately I had him do only half the work - the work was done really well, but he was a little hard to manage.

They are complete lawn care and snow people. They are really reliable. I use them every month. The owner of the company is kind and professional. Their prices vary depending on what they do. It is equal to or lesser than that of other competitors in the area.