Avery Tree Experts

Overall - excellent. I reached out to Avery Tree Experts (Christian) because they were working down the street at a neighbor's house. Amazingly, Christian responded right away and was able to do the requested work that same afternoon! Unlike some other tree services, Avery employs a highly skilled climber, who can take down large tree sections without damaging the yard. This was exactly what I needed for the oak overhanging the house & garden - he dropped several huge limbs perfectly. Similarly, another team member dropped a moderate sized tree (~35') in a tough spot without damaging the big holly next to it, nor the garage on the other side. Short- excellent work. While I admire the skilled craftsman, some of the team members doing brush removal were less careful. (e.g. after doing a great job dropping a limb and avoiding the raised beds, one of the brush clearing crew, almost dragged part of the limb through the beds. It was only the alertness of another crew member that avoided trashing the bed). Net - I would hire Avery Tree Experts again.

Overall it went well, It was not a busy time of year and he was very responsive and gave me an excellent price. He trimmed exactly want I wanted to trim and took out a big maple tree and grinded the stump. He was on punctual when he expected to arrive but it did take a few days to come back and grind the stump. This is the third time I used him and have not had any problems with him. All the times I used him, most of his crew were the same.

Crew did their job in terms of cutting down trees and trimming branches. But never came back to grind the stump as greed - even after taking full payment. Made multiple calls to Chris, each time promised to come back to grind the stump - but never did. If he had just said he just can't make it back and gave up part of payment -- would have been ok with that. But kept making excuses instead. Eventually gave up - if he had finished the job would have been ok. Not recommended.

.

The first time Christian came, he was extremely difficult to get in touch with.  However, they did a great job cleaning up and even replaced a small bush and part of the fence that was damaged during removal.  They took great care to not wreck our lawn which we appreciated.
Fast forward to after Sandy:  it took months for Christian to even call us back, despite his office saying it would be a few weeks.  We waited and waited for him until we finally got him to come to the house almost a year later!  Fine, our needs weren't emergent and we could have looked elsewhere but we felt like he was ok the first time we didn't want to chance it.  Well, we regret this decision now.  My husband was always the one to deal with him and was in charge of what work was going to be done so I wasn't as much in the loop about the specific work he was hired to do.  So, the day he came to do the work he came up to the house and said he was going to come back later in the afternoon for payment.  Well, I made the mistake and obliged, paying him the full amount for the work.  However, when my husband got home that night, one of the stumps wasn't grinded like discussed and one of the trees wasn't removed that was supposed to be.  This was the end of August.......multiple phone calls later and Christian still hasn't come out to finish the work and is no longer accepting our phone calls.  He even called my husband a week ago and when my husband answered he hung up.  My husband immediately called back and he never answered.  Must have dialed us by an accident. 
Also, we realized the sassafras trees he had removed initially still had their stumps in the ground and now our mulched beds where they were sprout dozens of sassafras weeds that come back two weeks after digging them out.
A neighbor of ours reported a similar situation about Christian where he promised to return to their house to prune a couple trees and never came back after getting his payment. 
We will never make the mistake again of hiring him.  Beyond unreliable and pushy for payment before his work is done.o,

They were excellent. They were competent and did a very good job of tree removal. They were prompt and punctual.

I spoke to Christian about a week or so after Hurricane Sandy. He said that he would get out and take a look at all my tree damage from the storm.  During a very hectic time for companies of this type he gave me a reasonable estimate and said that he would schedule as soon as clients with emergency needs had been taken care of.
Less than a week later his team came out and the process actually took 6 people two full days of work to get everything removed.
They were able to carefully extract trees by my pool, next to my neighbor's house and on my back fence without any damage to my property or my neighbor's property. When they saw a couple of branches I didn't notice during the quotation process that looked like they could be a problem they removed them at no charge.
Not only was I impressed based on the 4 companies I solicited for the work but I also referred a neighbor that used him the following week with the same type of results.

Overall it went OK.