Hagan & Sons Tree Service Inc.

unknown

I contacted Hagan and Son's to cut down 6 trees on my property.  I asked for a contract when Wallace Hagan came out to give me an estimate and he told me that he would give it to me when he came out to cut the trees down.  There were several weeks between the time of our conversation and when they came out due to 18 days of rain in my area of MD.  The day before the job, I got a call that they were coming and I was leaving for a 10 day vacation out of state the day after the job was to be done.  They arrived later than quoted time due to problems with the first job of the day so they got to my house around 10am on Friday, May 27th.  
I knew that the trucks they were going to use would be heavy and big but I never dreamed the amount of damage that could be done to my property.  I very specifically told Mr. Hagan that I did not want them to drop any trees on to the leach field area of my yard.  This area was in the vicinity of the two large Ash trees that I contracted to have them remove.  The four Leyland Cypresses that I also contracted to have removed were on the other side of my yard.  
There were only two men there to cut down these large Ash trees.  Mr Wallace Hagan operated the bucket truck and he had a worker on the ground to assist.  Later another man came with a truck capable of holding the larger parts of the Ash trees trunks.  I was inside my house most of the time they were working but occasionally looked in on what they were doing in the yard.  I was not happy to see that Mr. Hagan dropped the Ash trees on the very area I asked him not to damage.  I previously told him that he would need a crane to remove the two Ash trees due to their height and size.  When they brought the Ash trees down they also broke off several significantly large branches of a large Tulip Popular that was in the area of the work, branches of other trees were not trimmed up to look neat - the branches had the ends cut off but then the rest of the branch was left bare and needing to be trimmed off at the trunk.  Now when they were done on the first day I did not see a lot of the problems.  It was only later when I returned from vacation and looked at my yard that I was able to assess the damage to my property.  So many of the details I am giving were only noticed after the work was "finished".  Mr. Hagan did not give me a contract on that Friday and he did not bring it when he came to do the stump grinding on the following Sunday, May 29th, and he did not give it to me when I paid him the final payment.  I realize now that I made a big mistake not getting the contact in hand BEFORE they did ANY work.  I do have my cancelled checks to prove that Hagan and Sons did something for us.  The worse thing about all this is that this contractor has done work for my husband's business years ago and I felt that they were going to do a good job based on that work.
When I returned home, I found four ground stumps each with a large pile of chips on the ground and a hole that had to be filled with soil, damage to the flower beds on the side of my driveway, damage to several other areas of the grassy areas along my driveway ( we have a flag lot so we have a long driveway and then our property begins) , damage to my mailbox and tree limbs up to four inches across embedded up to one foot into my lawn over where the Ash trees were felled, ruts in the lawn where huge limbs were dragged, a lot of small limbs scattered all over the lawn area in the vicinity of the Ash trees. (this is not including the expected damage to the areas the large trucks had to traverse my lawn) Mr. Hagan assured me when he first spoke with me that the would leave the area cleaned up and restored as best as possible.  I knew that there would be deep ruts from the trucks but I have spent over 15 hours working in my yard to restore and correct the damages.  If I had to pay someone to do the work it would have run into over a  thousand dollars .We could not afford to do that after paying $2500 for the tree removal.  The part that really makes me angry is the conversation I had with Mr. Hagan about the three trees and the stumps that were left unfinished.  One of the Ash trees had three smaller  (in circumference) trees coming out of the back of the stump but would be considered all one tree.  When I asked Mr. Hagan about why he left them (in a phone call on Sunday May 29th) he replied that the three trees were healthy and fine so he decided to leave them.  I also asked why he left the two Ash stumps so high and he replied that the stumps were so rotten and full of dirt that he could not use his saw to cut them down any further than he had done.  Now when I returned home and began assessing the damages I took a good look at these smaller trees.  One is dead (and in fact, has a decaying rotten tree leaning up against it that we could not see before the large Ash tree was removed), the second tree has hollowed out areas in the trunk and the third tree is losing bark (as sign of bad tree health). Furthermore, the two stumps could have been cut down further and were not all rotten and full of dirt as Hagan stated.  
The way I see this is it was an ungodly hot day, they did not realize the extent of work they needed to do and ran out of time, they did not want to have to take down any more trees (so they left basically half of another tree on the backside of the largest Ash tree, they did not take the time while they had the bucket truck there to trim up the trees that were damaged when they felled the two Ash trees and they did not have enough workers on hand to properly clean up the the debris from the felled trees.
Now Mr. Hagan spoke with me(by phone) to let me know he was coming back on Saturday or Sunday to grind the stumps of the Cypress trees.  I know he was there on Sunday because I spoke with him (by phone) on that day.  He assured me that everything was going to be taken care of as far as the stump grinding was concerned.  Most of the damage to my plants and lawn along the driveway was done on that Sunday.  Since we found all the deficiencies, I have been trying to get Mr. Hagan to give me a copy of the contract.  He has not called me back and has not mailed of dropped off a copy of my contract.  I have to honestly say that if he offered to come back and cut down the three remaining Ash trees and cut down the stumps to a more reasonable height I would say NO.  I don't want to ever have Hagan and Sons on my property again.  I would only recommend them for a commercial property that has no lawn to worry about and if you don't care about cleanup.  I have photos of the trees that are left and the damage to our property but I am not sure I can include it with this review.

Terrific! They came to do the estimate on a Saturday. The tree was in close proximity of power lines and other trees. The tree removal and associated work was completed without disturbing either. They came and did the work and barely left a trace that they were there. All I noticed was a couple of faint tire tracks on the edge of the lawn. Great job and I will definitely use them if I need tree work in the future. They are in my contact list as Hagan and Son's Ninja Tree Removal.

unknown

Perfect - start to finish.

THEY GET THEIR WORK DONE QUICKLY. THEIR PRICE IS FAIR AND THEY ARE PLEASANT TO DEAL WITH. THEY DID THE JOB VERY WELL. THEY SHOW UP ON TIME ALL OF THE TIME.