Precision Excavating Inc.

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We felt cheated and taken advantage of by Precision Excavating and that the owner, Phil Leonforte did not deal with us with reaonable professionalism or integrity.
We were referred to Precision Excavation by a neighbor to remove our septic tank and excavate a trench and lay the pipe to connect our home to the town sewer line. The original price quoted was $5,200, $2,600 in advance and $2,600 on completion, for a job projected to take 3-5 days to excavate a distance of approx. 142 feet. The price seemed to be a little on the high side, but that did not turn out to be the real problem. 
  Unfortunately I was unable to be present at the site during the first few days of the job, and had to rely on telephone communications from  Phil.  After his second day on the job, Phil called to say that he had hit rock near the sewer connection at the street and would need to bring in a separate piece of equipment - a rock hammer -  to break through the rock ledge. He said that the minimum charge for this would be $3,200 plus $1,200 per day for work beyond 2 days. The price seemed outrageous, and it also turned out that Phil knew in advance of providing his estimate that the entire area, including our property, had substantial solid rock ledges at or just below the surface.  But, at that point, the yard was all dug up and, worse, he had already disconnected the plumbing leaving us with no water in the house. Under duress, therefore, I sent him a second check for $3,200.
After two more days, Phil called again  to say that he had not been able to make sufficient progress with the rock hammer he used, and would need to bring in a larger.rock hammer and rental machine. He offered a $400 credit on the first rock hammer, but his price for the larger rock hammer was even more outrageous: $2,400 for 1 day, $4,200 for 2 days, $6,100 for 3 days, and so on - which would bring the total job cost to more than $12,000.  I told him to hold off until I could meet him on the job site to see for myself what was going on.
I met Phil at the site the next afternoon, which was a Friday. I'm no expert but it certainly seemed like he was dragging out the work. What I found was that over the course of 4 days on the job, the only work that had been accomplished was removal of the septic tank, excavation (though soil and loose rock) of a shallow trench (about 2 feet deep) running no more than 30-40 feet from the house connection (barely 1/4 of the  full distance), placement of plastic sewer pipe at the bottom of the ditch, and excavation of approximately 10-15 feet of rock from the street line connection point.
Walking perpendicular to the street along the property line, Phil  sought to impress me with all the rock that lay under the surface for long distance. His wanted to dig the trench through about 60 feet of that rock, following a path around the edge of the yard. The indirect and much longer route he proposed seemed odd. I suggested instead that he try digging the trench diagonally across the yard, a much shorter distance which had little if any surface rock. Phil resisted that suggested path and further claimed that he had not even checked the ground under the diagonal route for rock beneath the surface!. It was only after I insisted that he try it, and told him that I was remaining to see what happened, that Phil got in his backhoe and was able to cut a clean trench, without hitting solid rock, diagonally across the property for almost the entire remaining distance. The point at which he reached solid rock left only @ 15-20 feet still to be excavated. The work took him less than two hours.
At that point, Phil asked me for a $4,000 additional deposit for what he said would require two day's work with the big rock hammer to cut through the remaining 15-20 feet. Given that there seemed to be even less than one day's work, and given what I had just witnessed, I declined to give him any more money and told him that I would meet him on Monday and planned to be present while he worked. Phil tried to dissuade me from coming on Monday, saying that I would find it too loud, and told me to wait until Tuesday, the second day, when he expected he would finish.
Early Monday morning I received a call from Phil who told me that I should not come, that rain was forecast for Monday and Tuesday, and he and the equipment rental company decided to delay the work until Wednesday and Thursday. I said that, in that case,I would meet him at the site on Wednesday. I  arrived at the site on Wednesday morning but Phil was not yet there. However, contrary to what he had told me, the large rock hammer was already on the property and, except for a few feet he had left undone, Phil had already finished almost the entire trench. When Phil did arrive a little before 10 AM, he had no answer as to why he had worked on Tuesday (when it did, in fact rain) or why he did not inform me. Nor could he explain why, if he worked on Tuesday, he left over only a few feet of unbroken rock instead of finishing the work. 
Nevertheless, Phil was still demanding an additional $4,000 deposit to finish the job, meaning that the cost of a job originally quoted for $5,200 had risen to $12,000.  Again, I felt that he was trying to take unfair advantage of the fact that our yard was dug up and, worse, that our house would continue to be without water until the sewer connection was completed.  After some discussion, he agreed to a $1,800 discount and a firm price. Again, under duress, I gave Phil a check for the additional amount asked for - $2,000 - raising the total amount already paid for the job to  $7,800.
I remained to observe the work. Phil began to operate the rock hammer at about 11:30 AM. It took him about 45 minutes to finish excavating the 5 feet.or so of rock he had left over from the day before and complete the trench.  
But there was more. Soon afterwards I received invoices demanding an additional payment $4,700, including a new $300 extra charge (nowhere provided for in the contract), based that the actual length of the sewer line was 12 feet (i.e. 8.3%) longer than he projected. I declined to pay the amount demanded and the company has commenced a lawsuit for $4,700, which remains pending.

Phil did a great job under difficult circumstances.  He quoted me a price and stuck to it even though the job turned out to be more than he bargained for as the baffle was in a difficult location. 

Phillip work tirelessly for days with attention to restoring yard and general clean up.