FUCHS LAWN & LANDSCAPING

We have a less than 1/2 acre lot. It is primarily lanscaped with flowers and shrubs. About May 2012, we were working outside on the front garden and we were approached by the owner of the copany who was offering his services. We agreed to have his crew mow every week and for them to help finish the summer prep that had been started, but not finished, by another provider. It was agreed on a $40 per week price for mowing and lawn maintenance, and on a $15.00/hour/ man rate for clean up and landscape maintenance (to be done in June and October). The crew is all Mexican workers. Hard working, but not quite knowledgable people. In their efforts to prune and clean they chopped down an Oak tree that we had been growing since it was a seedling (for about 7 years). It was gifted to us from the Missouri Botanical Garden. It is no more. Several other bushes were improperly prunned. The roses were chopped down, not prunned, as if they had been cut down with a hedge trimmer. We also have no evidence of the lawn being treated, as it is infested with weeds. The work to be performed for the fall clean up consisted of mulching, pruning, and cutting down the dormant perennials. The work was only partially finished, leaving the back side of the property uncleaned, untrimmed, and forgotten. We had to finish the job ourselves. We received periodical bills and we paid them as received. Our last contact with this company was in November 2012. Then in April 2013 we received 4 invoices all in sequencial order and backdated to June and October for work performed amounting to over $3,700.00. We sent a letter disputing the bill, but we could not reach an understanding with the owner. He said nothing about the damage, but explained the job did not get completed because his worker had to go back to Mexico. He said he could not bill us before, for the hourly work, because he has a small operation and he could not get around to doing the billing. We were totally unaware of the mounting costs for this work, as we had been billed and paid for services as work was being performed. In previous years we had never paid more than $1,500 for the same work performed. Had we been given a bill for the hourly work at the onset, we would have terminated the services in June. Since we never had notice when the workers were there, we did not have a sense of the costs that were being accumulated. The original bill to finish the Spring/Summer clean up alone was for $2,380, more than double what we have paid for in the past. Part of the problem perhaps is that it is difficult to reach the company. They only have a cell phone and a fax. No e-mail. We tried to resolve the dispute, but the owner only responded with cheesy remarks and simply talked over us. He would not listenn to what we had to say.