Ben & John Tree Service

gsrs

I believed this man was referred by another landscape person known to me.That turns out not to be the case.
I did not check.  He came with his receipt pad, estimated the job (remove two dead trees from in front of my house), took $500 deposit and left.
There were days and days of calls back and forth with many excuses as to why he wasn't showing up. There were supposed accidents, people in the hospital, car emergencies etc.
finally I lost patience and Ben called me to say that I had been "impolite to his partner" and that they were returning my deposit and would not do the work.  I said that sounded good to me.  Return my money and call it a day.It is now November and I have not received any reimbursement from this company.
For a while my calls were unanswered.  Sometimes the phone was "disconnected".  Other times the phone just clicked off.
Long story short, he has answered my call a couple of times, assuring me that the money is coming.  He hasn't forgotten me, etc.
I think I learned an expensive lesson here. 
The first one was to check Angie's list FIRST before dealing with anyone!
It was this experience that got me signed up.  Sadly, I was a little late. Had I checked first, I would have seen that this was not a company to trust.

See above

Terrible Experience. See above

First  of all, they limbed the tree as does every other tree sevice - fine, no problem there.  But that's where normal practice ended.  Instead of cutting the tree into short sections from above and letting them fall, they felled the entire trunk as one piece.  This left three15"-diameter x 12"-deep "divots" in the ground, a trench the size of the trunk in the lower yard where we had had sod laid the past spring, and a four-foot tall "stump" big enough for elves to bake cookies in..  They also damaged a retaining wall which separates the upper and lower yards, as well as taking out three large branches of a rather old dogwood tree, which made my wife cry because it's her favorite tree in the yard.  After they took down our tree, they cut into pieces and removed them; they also rermoved the branches.   Then they moved across the street and took down our neighbor's tree.  I kept going over and asking when they were going to come back to cut down the stump and have it ground out, and fill in the divots. They haven't been seen or heard from since.

I have to be fair to one young man named Buddy: he was very professional, friendly and had a very good work ethic.  Ben was friendly but only did about half of what he said he would, and John was very standoffish.

I haven't been able to get in touch with either them or thir insurance company - which is an AUTOMOBILE insurance company.