OAKWOOD LANDSCAPE

I've retained Oakwoods for snowplowing for the past two years (this would be my 3rd season), and had previously been happy with their services. Although they did an adequate job in the past for a reasonable rate, after my experience with the last snowstorm event (Feb 8th & 9th 2013), I switched to another company for better service and better price.
When I retained Oakwoods originally, they checked out my driveway and gave me a quote (current rate is $40).
We had a signficant amount of snow during 2/08/2013 to 2/09/2013 (Blizzard conditions). While I understand that the roads were closed during the storm, they waited until long after the storm was over (and after roads were re-opened) to plow my driveway once (and they did not remove all snow in middle of driveway). I then received a bill that told me they were charging four times their usual rate due to the extra volume of snow. While I understand that this was a large snow event, I do not appreciate being told after the fact that their rate was increasing so dramatically (and also I know of other plow companies in the area that did not increase rates for this same event).
Although I was not pleased with being told of this rate increase after the fact, I still paid the bill but I sent a note along with my check expressing my concern. I did receive a call back promptly, and they told me that their invoice was justified by their increased costs for this storm event because they had to pay for 50 extra hours of plowers' time (not 50 hours for me, but 50 hours for all their customers), and also by the fact that it was more than 6 inches of snow being plowed in my driveway and normally they would have plowed more than once for this size event so they charged as though they plowed four times (even though they only plowed once, they said it took longer than usual to plow once). When I raised my concerns to the company about being notified after the
fact that they were quadrupling their rates, and about the overall cost for one plow event (plowed driveway once, and charged $160 when they normally charge $40), they told me I could go elsewhere -- so I did!
From a customer service standpoint, at a minimum, they could have at least expressed appreciation for my business (I did pay the bill, even though I disagreed with it) and they could have apologized for not notifying me ahead of time of the increase in
rates. If they had done that simple bit of customer service, I probably would have continued using them. I felt as though I was polite, calm, and reasonable in expressing my concerns. I understand that they were trying to justify their costs to me but I was very upset when after being a long-term customer their only solution to address my concerns was to tell me that I could just use another company.
The good news is that I was very quickly able to locate two other plow companies in my area that charge less than half of what Oakwoods charges (for the same snow event, they charge $40 to $45 per day and plow more than once during the day), and will plow more frequently during snowstorms including storms with greater than 6 inches of snowfall (I heard very good reports from people I know who used these other companies).