Monster Tree Service of Fort Wayne

We contacted Monster in early February 2023 to provide an estimate to cut down one large tree in our back yard and prune various trees in our back and front yard. Anthony came out and provided a reasonable estimate to cut down the large tree and prune the other smaller trees. We asked a lot of questions while he was out there, such as, will we need to move our sons playset/swing set, to cut the tree down. Anthony said no, they’ll move it. Per Anthony they do this all the time. I signed the agreement and confirmed they would do the job. The lead time for them to come out and perform the service was pretty long. The crew came out in March with the intention to do all the work. When they came out, the ground was soft because of the rain, so they didn’t cut down the large tree, but they did prune all the other trees around our yard. We have two gate openings on both sides of our house for them to get back there with their equipment. The crew leader said they would most likely bring one of their heavier trucks with a lift and cut the tree down from the street that ran along the back of our yard. They said they would come out later once the ground hardens (which I understood). They told my wife it may have to wait till the end of the season but they weren’t certain. We didn’t hear from them for a while regarding cutting down the big tree (after they already pruned the trees in our yard). My wife called numerous times, practically begging them to come out and cut this tree down, so we could finish the landscaping in our back yard. Keep in mind we see their trucks in our subdivision. My wife called the main number and left a message indicating we wanted to hold off cutting the big tree down this spring since it was taking them so long to come out and wanted to push it back till later this year (but we still wanted them to do it). There seemed to be a miscommunication because we then received an email notice from Monster stating we cancelled the tree service. We immediately called Monster back that day, spoke with Lindsay and reiterated again that we did NOT want to cancel the service. We still want them to cut down the tree but we wanted to wait till Fall. It didn’t seem like a big deal, considering their lead time to come out and complete the job is sooo long. We told Lindsay we were anxious to finish our landscaping for the spring. Lindsay said it wasn’t a problem and put it back on the books. My wife received a phone call while I was out of town and was told by Lindsay, the owner will be coming by our house to assess the tree and our backyard. We thought he was checking on whether the ground was hard or soft. The day the owner stopped by, he hopped out of his truck and took a peek at our backyard. It was odd that he didn’t ring our doorbell. My wife saw him outside but by the time she was able to go out to talk to him, he hopped in the truck and took off. Moments later I receive an email from Monster with a new estimate that was $2000 more than the original estimate (we received 6 weeks ago) to cut down the tree. After trying to call the owner numerous times, he finally returned our call and essentially told my wife, Anthony (the estimator) under bid the job to cut down the tree and the estimate to cut the tree down is now $3500 instead of $1600. He actually had the nerve to tell my wife Anthony made a mistake on the quote and if we want them to cut down the tree it’ll cost $3500. After my wife pushed back, he said well you also cancelled the service. My wife clearly stated, “No I didn’t, I wanted to push back the service till Fall”. “I called Lindsay and explained to her that we wanted to push back the service because we didn’t want to complete our landscaping and then have them tear it up mid summer". The owner then asked if we wanted them to do the job or not. My wife responded and said it depends, are you going to do it for the original price of $1600 or for $3500? The owner then hung up on her. Classless. We can’t help but think they intentionally underquoted the price to cut down our tree because they wanted the job to prune the other trees, which from a workload/time standpoint, is probably a more profitable job. Now that they completed the easy work and got paid, they are trying scam us and significantly raise the price to cut down the large locust. I’m floored how someone could be so dishonest and unethical. We will NEVER use their services again.

The property has eight trees that I wanted pruned and another to be removed. I met with the Monster Tree Service arborist and was very impressed with his professionalism and knowledge of the trees. His estimate was very close in cost to an estimate received from another company that I had contracted with in the past. My decision to go with Monster Tree Service was made almost entirely upon the presentation of their arborist. I had hoped that the work to be done would reflect the thoroughness of the appraisal that he made of the trees. When I arrived at the property, the crew had already left after being on site for less than four hours. They had missed numerous dead branches in addition to omitting one large tree altogether and had not raised the limbs above power lines and roof as specified for another large tree. There was much debris left on the roof and in the yard in addition to ruts left in the yard from machinery. The arborist had told me that the crew would be climbing and not be using such equipment to complete the work. Again...this was all done in less than four hours which included performing some additional work in the next door neighbor's yard. I had been told me that this would be an all-day job. Needless to say, I was disgusted with what I saw and left a telephone message with the office. To the company's credit, a man arrived shortly thereafter and made some observations. A crew arrived later that same day to remove what was missed and to clean up after themselves. From my own observations after they left, I believe that they primarily just removed some of the larger dead branches and raised some of the lower ones as specified. It looks like they performed very little pruning throughout the remainder of the trees. They even left an old rope attached to a higher branch of one of the beech trees with a piece of plastic dangling from it. This is just a small example that tends to make me think that there was very little attention to detail on the part of the crew. I thereafter asked if the arborist could give his opinion of the finished project. I received a short reply from the owner stating “the scope of work was completed as agreed upon”. Whenever I've had trees pruned in the past, there has always been a very noticeable difference in the looks and shape of the trees to make me feel good about the money spent. With this job...I'm just not seeing it.

They did a nice job trimming trees that were overhanging the house. One tree in particular was on a slope and was at least 25 feet high and they managed to do the trimming with little difficult without a cherry picker.