The Ready Company

Service went very well and satified.

Well obviously, we were very happy with them or we wouldn't have signed a contract with them to maintain our yard work next year. We like the knowledge and the fact that the owner was on the site with the people that worked with him and he had good interactions with them and with us. On all of that, I would give them an A. I don't have a lot to compare it with but we were very satisfied. Whatever we paid, we got our money for it.

The owner, Steve, is knowledgeable, intelligent, and hardworking. Also honorable and a pleasure to work with. They started on a rainy day and removed some shrubs before being rained out. The second day was not much better. Just a few hours each day. Friday was the first full day and Steve brought 3 guys. One of them left early, but both Sauk, Doug, and Steve worked diligently. My husband used his tractor to pull out the pampas grass and to deliver the rock from the pile to the shrubs -- cutting off hours and hours and hours of labor and saving a good deal of money. Steve and Doug finished Saturday and worked from 9AM til Noon.
The first part of the job (shrub removal, edging removal, new pavestone edging) were bid and paid as bid. The second part of the job (new plants, planting, rock and delivery twice, placing the rocks) seemed to be impossible to bid and I just ended up paying the bill. By that time, I had developed some level of trust for Steve and I think the bill was fair although I have no idea how the amount was derived. I am not used to doing business that way and would have preferred it be estimated and approved in advance.
I paid Steve separately for the plants when they were delivered. He charges something between his discounted price and retail -- to pay for the warranty he provides. I do not know whether what I paid was lower or higher than the 30% sale price the nursery was offering (with no warranty) as the sale price was not passed on to the contractor or to me.
I paid the nursery directly for the rocks prior to delivery. We estimated 5 tons of rocks, but the pile was smaller than any pile of rocks I have ever seen. We ordered another 5 tons, paying the delivery fee again, and could have used more. This is not Ready Company's fault, but Colonial Nursery was very stingy with their rocks and I will not buy from them again. The rocks, with delivery, for Large River Rock was $328 x 2 - $654.00!
Steve collects half the bid when he begins work. In this case, it was $1075 or half the first part of the job. As I stated, I paid for the plants ($587) and the rocks (($654) and then the balance ( $2315 but there were a couple more plants in there) at the end. I really appreciated that Steve and I went to the nursery together and came up with a landscape design as a team effort. I am very pleased with the result. He charged $1000 in labor for the second (unbid) part of the job. The jobs were all mixed up so it was difficult to estimate whether that was high or low and how much our labors (and tractor) saved us.
Steve is very professional, entertaining, and interesting. It is fun to work with him, and I trust that we got a fair price. I say I trust that because it feels about right -- I have nothing to compare it to and no way to even estimate how many man hours were spent on the second part of the job. If I have more landscaping tasks in the future I will definitely call Ready Company, and I highly recommend them. I slightly downgraded the price to a B rating because I had no knowledge of the cost of t he second part of the job until the job was completed so I do not know whether the price was competitive or not.

I had a problem with the very back of the yard in growing grass. Every time it rained, our dog would get into the mud and bring it in the house. My wife and I call Steve Hatfield of The Ready Company and he came out to assess what we wanted done. Steve was very prompt and very easy to talk to. We explained what we thought would work for us and he had no problem with the ideas. He suggested some ideas of his own and we came to an agreement. The day they were to do the job, they were there exactly on time and by 6:00 pm that same day the job was completed. I would have no problem of going back to Steve for any future project. My wife and I were very, very pleased with The Ready Company's job and the results.

Nice job. They did it how I asked them to do it. He had bid the job at over 800, but when they were done the bill came in at 565. Very honest man. They didn't use as many materials as they originally thought they were going to need.

The owner came out personally, gave us a walkover of our yard free of charge, and made several recommendations about how to improve things at no cost. He then gave us an estimate. He came out, watched what was going on, and got the job done. They did a nice job. Everything worked out great including the people that he used.