Michael Conley's Landscaping

It went very, very badly. After giving Mr. Conley the go-ahead on May 3 to begin work, we did not hear from him again until 9 pm, the evening of June 12. He called at that time to let us know he'd be at our house at 7 am the next morning. I had to cancel plans for the next three days to be at my house while he was working. He did show up on time the next day, and proceeded to knock on my door and ring my doorbell every 5 minutes, for hours. He was unable to take direction and go do the work, without continually showing me his progression and asking questions. This went on for three days. He did pull out our overgrown shrubs, but replaced them with very poor quality, tiny little new ones. One of the shrubs, a Gold Mop Cypress, had a huge dead area in it (still does), and another shrub - a Bird's Nest Spruce - had multiple dead branches on it***(more to come on that) The tree he installed - a Kousa Dogwood - was small, had a curved trunk, and wilted brown leaves. He did create a new bedding area - his method of doing this is to spray weed killer on the grass, then dump mulch over top. Doing that creates two major problems for the homeowner. First, try digging through the sod in order to plant anything. Good luck! And second, it's impossible to kill all the grass by spraying it, therefore, grass starts to grow in the beds immediately. We've been spraying weed killer for months now, and the grass just keeps growing through the mulch. I also had to assist him in creating the outside edge of the bed - he was unable to figure out how to create the curved line on his own. He did not bring along spray paint, or a rope line. ***Within a few days of planting that shrub, we noticed entire branches of our nearby Redbud tree being killed off. We've had that tree in our yard for 11 years, and have never had a single twig die or break off. There are now several large sections of that tree that are completely dead. We are 100% convinced that the Spruce shrub has a parasite or disease that has infected the tree. Mr. Conley was asked to fix an edge of a bed he had previously installed for us, in the Fall of 2011. The edge of the bed was to line up with our property line - we paid to have our yard surveyed, and had stakes and rope marking the edge of our property. In the Spring of 2012, we had an aluminum corner fence installed bordering that bed. Once the fence went in, it was clear that the edge of the landscape bed wasn't straight. We just needed him to re-edge that one side, so it lined up straight - as it was supposed to in the first place. He charged us to fix that - something that was not done right in the first place. He was also asked to tidy up some older natural stone retaining walls. He had a hard time figuring out how to make them level, and again, I had to go outside and "help" him numerous times. He was asked to remove the natural stone retaining wall that borders our front walk, and replace it with a more uniform, man-made stone. He did do a satisfactory job on that, but we didn't like the fact that the wall had no cap to it. It looks very industrial, especially with all the natural stone on our house itself, and in our other beds. We asked him to cap the wall using natural, smooth slate. We sent him a picture from an online source to illustrate what we had in mind. He didn't understand what we wanted, and directed us to go to his supplier and pick something out. My husband and I did that the next day, immediately found what we were looking for, snapped a picture and emailed it to him. He then told us he didn't know how to do what we wanted and was going to get help. He showed up unannounced the following week with another contractor to discuss that wall cap. This was Weds, June 20. He told us he'd have it done by that Friday. We did not see or hear from Mr. Conley or anyone else until the last week of July - 5 weeks after he promised to have the job done. At that time, he left a message on our voicemail (we were out of town) rattling on with a very long excuse about starting another job out of town that took longer than expected. We did not immediately return his call. He called again several weeks later, and gave us the same sad excuse story. I returned his call at some point in August, and at that time told him that we were going to hire someone else to finish the job. The Dogwood tree was looking absolutely pathetic by then, and needed to be removed. I told him that we were extremely unhappy with his disappearance, and with the quality of the work he'd done. I told him that he needed to adjust our bill, and we needed to move forward. We were emailed a bill on Sept. 14. He removed the cost of the Dogwood tree, but nothing else. He did not remove the charge for fixing up the bed edge that wasn't done right in 2011. He is standing behind the shrubs he planted - saying that they look fine, and are not diseased. He stands by his method of installing planting beds. And he thinks we should have tracked him down when he didn't show back up at our house to finish the work he started. On Sept. 21 (one week after emailing us the bill), we received a second email, to let us know the bill was overdue! We had a busy travel week prior, and had not even opened the email by that point. We then emailed him with a detailed list of how we felt the bill should be adjusted, and why. The next day he threatened placing a lien on our house if we did not pay the full price by Oct. 5. We contacted the BBB. We have come to the conclusion that it is not worth our time to pursue this in court, although we know we'd win. There is no signed contract, and no written payment terms. We want to make other consumers in the area aware of our experience with this horrible business, so this doesn't happen again to someone else. DO NOT deal with this person. He DOES NOT guarantee his work in writing. He DOES NOT give a signed contract, or a work schedule. And he clearly DOES NOT care about customer service. After 12 years in our home, and hiring countless contractors, we have never, ever encountered a situation quite like this. DO NOT fall for his low price - it's low for a reason. This has been a very valuable lesson for us.