Trudel's Tree Service

Absolutely do not hire this company (Mike and Sean Trudel Blackstone MA). I still cannot believe the way we were treated or understand why. I can't tell you if this is typical of them but with so many tree cutting services why would you ever take the chance after reading this. This review is 100% accurate and I will gladly fund the cost of a polygraph test if they wish to dispute any aspect of it.....Trudel's was supposed to have the job completed in two days but instead worked appx. 9 hours total over several weeks after which they stopped showing up entirely and never came back despite receiving payment beyond the amount of service performed. We were also forced to finish cutting large trees left on the ground and performing clean up they were supposed to do. They even missed day 1 with a call, day 2 was a no-show, day 3 called saying they were late but would be there by 10 am and instead showed up at 5 and left a truck only. I missed 1/2 day of work each of the first three days because I wanted to go over some specifics of the job they were not showing up for. It wasn't until the 4th day that they worked at all - for one hour until somebody stopped at the job site in a pickup truck and they left with him for more than an hour!!!! For a few weeks after their last time working they would randomly leave apologetic messages promising to arrive the next day, or in two days, etc and then not show once again and not call until a few days later when they would profusely apologize and then no show yet again. This was a pattern that went on for weeks. They also subcontracted the stumpgrinding to another company who expected to complete their work in one day. However Trudel's failed to update them on their progress, or lack thereof, so the stumpgrinder kept showing up or sending his guys at his expense to find the job was not finished and forcing him to come back time and time again. Not only did Trudels leave a mess behind, and not cut the stumps to proper height for the grinder, but the stump grinding created a huge mess that Trudel's never came back to clean up as promised. Ultimately the stump grinder did some clean up to help us out despite wanting to obviously do one clean up at the end of the job - but the end of the job never came. Although we had agreed they would leave the wood on-site they did not cut many of there trees to the proper length, they left huge piles of tiny branches, and never cleaned up the mulch and other mess as promised leaving my yard looking like a landfill and scattering waste all over my yard as the wind blew. My wife, myself, and others spent countless hours cleaning up the mess that Trudel's never came back for and even now continue to have problems when we cut the grass because of all the clippings that blew around after not being cleaned up. They also left some very large trees on the property in 15 foot to 20 foot lengths (some very large in diameter) which as you can imagine was very challenging for us to cut (they promised 4 foot lengths) and very dangerous for us to attempt on our own. Since 4 grown men couldn't move several of them we had to use car jacks and logs to raise them to cut them ourselves. In the end they left 5 trees which were not cut down at all, others in unmanagable lengths, left branches and piles of branches, delayed cleanup of stump grindings so we were driving our cars over spikes from the trees and I now seem to have a slow leak in one of the tires on my 4 month old jeep (can't prove its related but quite the coincidence with 3k miles). The fact is these guys have an aversion to work apparently. Even the days they showed up they were supposed to get there early in the morning, would always call with a lame excuse, then show up at 4 pm work for an hour despite a lot of day light and then take off. For the first few weeks they left their boom truck on site so its unlikely they were working any where. The last day they worked they worked for an hour or so after which they said the chipper truck was full and they would empty it and be back in 20 minutes after which they would work all night because the stump grinder was coming to finish the job. They left for two hours, came back took their chain saws and light equipment and left never to work at least at my house again. A few weeks in they snuck the truck off in the morning and left me a message that they were getting it tested for "dialitic" testing to ensure it would pass a lightning strike and that it was being tested at that time and they would be back in an hour or two. They never came back ever again but strung us along for weeks with phone messages and false promises. The first day they worked a couple house they commented about all the jobs they were getting just from traffic on this rather busy street. As a thank you for all the free business they left me with a mess and actually started doing jobs for other people further down my street. A relative even confronted them doing a job somewhere else at which point they said they were very sorry but needed some quick money and they would call us that night but never did. In a couple of the voicemails they left they told me something similar that they needed money and had to do a quick "cash grab" or something to that effect. Of course we had been paying them all along and since they already had our money I guess too little of the balance was left for them to care about us. I've actually written out the day by day of what happened, the lies we were told, and so forth but I don't think there's enough room on all of angies list to map that out here. Just trust me stay away from these guys. If they offer to do the job for free they are asking too much. My wife and I were exceptionally nice to the two of them and it literally took weeks of lies and no shows before I called their "secretary" and told her that I would start filing complaints. That resulted in one more voicemail from them again profusely apologizing that this was not the way they do business and they would be there the following week to finish. Of course they never showed. Initially they quoted me $1700 for 17 trees. That was expanded to 21 trees for $2200. (the stump grinder was handled separately) In the end they cut down 17 trees but I had already given them $2000 (an overpayment of $300 based on the original contact). That doesn't even include the countless hours we spent doing the cleanup they didn't do. When they failed to show for the last time I left a message asking for the $300 at least for the overpayment. Obviously the cleanup and additional tree work was worth hundreds more. I never received a call back. I've never been so poorly treated in my entire life by a contractor and I've hired many. We are very easy people to work for and have no idea why this happened to us. It has made us extremely distrusting of hiring anyone and the stress of this ordeal has taken its toll. Furthermore, not only did they not finish this job but we've since added another 10 trees to the job which we've had to go elsewhere for. People like this is why Angies List exists. Trust me on this one.