Columbia Complete

I contacted Columbia Complete to get an estimate for some landscaping work. They were one of about five companies that we worked with. Our basic issue was that our house is the lowest in the immediate neighborhood, so during a heavy rain, we had water that had entered our walkout basement a couple times. Most of the companies I had contacted seemed like little more than a glorified lawn mowing company, and I didn't trust them with significant groundwork (decorative wall, retaining wall, re-grading, etc.). At first I was please with John Lohman. He wasn't very good at returning calls, but I looked past that initially since very few contractors seem to know how to return a call or follow up with a customer. They all suck at that. But John came out to our house with his dad and others, and they were actually the only landscaping company to "shoot" our back yard with a transit, to figure out where the true low spots were. Others would just come out, look at the yard, propose a quick and dirty solution ("uhh, just cut a swale through the yard to drain the water away"). As I continued to struggle with getting in touch with John, eventually he sent a new guy out to take another look at our yard. This new guy proposed an entirely different solution, disagreed with John, but said he would send us a detailed estimate in a matter of days. I waited two weeks and then finally had to start leaving messages with John again to figure out what was going on. He never returned my calls. Never. Finally, he picked up his phone once when I called. I asked about the gentleman he had sent to my house and about the estimate I had been waiting on. All I was told was, "Oh, him? Well, we found out a couple things about him and let's just say that that guy is no longer with us." That was it. I didn't any more details. I admit I was mildly concerned; had John sent some con artist or convicted felon to my house? Why was he being so vague and why had he not followed up with me? Anyhow, at this point, John said he would come out again and take a look at our yard and finally give me an estimate. He did show up when he said he would. We walked around the yard and again, I described the issues we were having. He said he would have an estimate to me in a matter of days. Guess what happened ... never heard from him again. Never. And I was sick of all his BS at that point, so I never called back and I went with different company. Still to this day, I never heard back from John. If you need landscaping done, I would recommend Danny's Landscaping Inc. 3610 Southland Drive, Columbia, MO 65201; 573-424-1016; gotdanny[at]gmail.com. They extended our patio, raised the level of our yard, put in a nice decorative wall, and also put in some additional flower beds. Our yard looks great and there are NO drainage issues. I never would have trusted John Lohman and Columbia Complete with such a project, considering John couldn't even return a phone call. Who knows what sort of disaster might have happened with my yard.