GREAT LAKES LANDSCAPE DESIGN

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Generally when you get a bid, it is free, right? Well, I met with the landscape designer and about a week later she (for the first time) told me that the design fee was $350. By this point I figured it was fine because the money would go towards my services and she seemed to have an idea of what I wanted and thought my quote from another vendor was overpriced. When she brought me my first design I couldn't believe how opposite it was of what I wanted! Being that I have no landscaping knowledge and probably didn't do a great job describing, I gave her the benefit of a redesign during our second meeting. When I received the redesign, it was for TWICE my budget. I couldn't believe what a big waste of time this was and was upset that my budget had been completely ignored. My first design wasn't what I wanted and the second one was double my budget. Were they even listening to me? The designer told me that she gave me what I wanted, but what I wanted was to also stay in budget. How am I supposed to know the cost of the look I was describing? She also claimed that as a designer, she too doesn't know the costs and that gets done in the office later. How can you be a landscape designer with 0 knowledge of costs? So then comes the $350 bill. I was unhappy that I had to pay this much money for what I considered a waste of my time. Here are some highlights of what they told me: - Isn't OUR time worth something? - We gave you what you wanted, you had the option of taking things out and doing less expensive things from there. (*Why wasn't this done in the first place?) - How are we supposed to know you didn't take our plans and use someone else to implement them. - You are the only person that has ever had a problem with this. GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE!

I bought a Groupon for $99 to have the company complete 3 hours of work, with 3 men. They put me off on the phone initially, but when I finally got an appt., I thought we were good to go. The three guys showed up, stood around for about 45 minutes, though one did work for 10 minutes. Then one of the men approached me and told me they would need different equipment, even though when I scheduled the appt I told them exactly what I would need. I agreed they could come back on Monday. I called Monday morning and left a message asking that they not do one of the things I had previously requested, as we had done something else with it over the weekend. No one came to my house Monday or Tuesday. I called the office and explained the situation, the woman (I believe Sharon) told me that she didn't know they needed to come out again and would set it up right again. I requested please before Friday as we had someone else coming to do something after they were finished. She assured me it would happen. No one showed on Wednesday or Thursday. I called and left a message last night, asking the status, and emailed Kari who had sent me an email requesting my Groupon so she could mark it redeemed. I called Friday morning to ask if anyone was coming. Kari told me Sharon was just getting out of a meeting and would call me back shortly. Needless to say, no one ever called me back Friday. I understand that some companies can be overwhelmed by participating in Groupon, but this is beyond ridiculous. If I had known this would be an issue from the beginning, I simply would have hired another company to do the job. I was continually made promises that they had no intention of keeping. I emailed them again on Friday evening and Saturday evening. A week later, I have still to receive any response. I did get a refund from Groupon.