Brito's Landscaping Services, LLC.

Mike Brito, owner and president of Brito Landscaping, presented his ideas to us in fall of 2012.  We were impressed with the promises he made and the portfolio that he showed us.  Mr. Brito seemed to be an honest man that was proud of his work.  We had gotten 3 estimates of which Brito was the highest, but we felt that his workmanship and his track record was worth the extra money.  After all, this is the entrance to our home and we wanted it done right.  We signed a contract in Oct. 2012 and gave Brito 1/2 of the agreed upon price.  We were to be his 2nd job in the spring. In April, Mike Brito sent a "stone mason" and an apprentice to our house.  Within a couple of days, he fired the stone mason and left the apprentice to do a job he is not qualified to do. This apprentice made a mess of the job, which wasn't apparent until all polymeric sand was dried and the job was almost all paid for - $9,876.  The approx. 2 foot wall was toppling over, there were pieces of rocks stuck in between huge gaps, mortar was spilling down the front of the fieldstone veneer, nothing was level, and even some of the TechoBloc tiles were placed upside down! Even the company owner said the job needed to be torn down and started all over again.  The company was very good at tearing the job down, but not so good at rebuilding it.  Mike Brito kept promising that he was going to send someone to do the work, claimed that it took 3 weeks for supplies to come in, and then later said it would be best to wait until after July 4th weekend and tackle it all at once.  It seems that Brito doesn't have their own stone mason because he had to hire a subcontractor to do the job!  The subcontractor was working our job "on the side" - which in subcontractor language means not getting it done.  After many, many, many times scheduling and rescheduling, the owner ordering the wrong color TechoBloc to fix their mess, the owner not getting the supplies that the subcontractor asked for, we finally pulled the plug - telling Mike Brito via email and registered mail that we wanted our money back as we gave him chance after chance after chance to make the job right.  It wasn't getting done. Mr. Brito responded in writing saying that he was "disheartened that our verbal agreement on how we would proceed with the repair was thrown out without prior notification."  He claimed that we "suddenly" - after we waited from 5/22/13  (the day Brito told us he was "disgusted" with the job his employees did)  to August 10th (the day we sent the email ceasing work)  for the work to be corrected, we were stopping the job and asking for a refund.  We wrote back to him and said that he could, indeed, finish the job - as long as he agree to a contract that would void the first contract and agree to a time line. Needless to say, we have heard nothing from him since he received our letter.  Our front steps are still a mess, he has $9,876 of ours, and he doesn't return the many phone calls we have made to his cell phone, messages left with his service, and messages left with his son, Jonathan Brito, who runs his office.  Brito Landscaping has now had 5 months to do a job that should have taken 4-5 days to complete if he had employees that knew how to do the job. His advertisements are full of lies as he claims his company works only ONE job at a time.  His facebook page has lovely pictures of jobs he was working on as ours stayed idle for months.  I have many pictures, emails, text messages, and other correspondences to prove all of the above and would be glad to share them with anyone thinking about hiring this company.  I'm sure Mike Brito will respond to this rating by blaming us somehow for the work that he promised and didn't get done.  He and his employees are very good at blaming the stone supply houses, other employees, subcontractors - anyone they can find - except themselves.

Overall it went ok. Originally we wanted a patio, however the amazing patio he was going to build for us was over our budget for a house we do not plan to stay in for very long. We then decided to just have the remnants of our above ground pool removed and replaced with grass. He also removed a piece of decking and put up a new railing.
They did not show up on the first scheduled day and it turned out they were supposed to reach out and let us know it got pushed back due to weather, but they had forgotten. They did show up on their next scheduled date though and the work was done very quickly. Brito had also mentioned fixing a bunch of little things around the property that never got fixed either. It may be because we did want him to finish quickly, but it would have been a good customer service "extra". 
They are a bit expensive in my opinion for what they did. $6000 for sod and a few shrubs seemed expensive to me, however I know that Brito does stand behind his work and if anything was to go wrong, he'd certainly fix it. I also understand that he gave us sod instead of seed and arborvitaes instead of normal shrubs.
I do look forward to reaching out to him if we get a new house that needs yard work.

It is an older gentleman and his wife runs the office. They are very communicative and they showed up when they said they would. They were very reliable and did a good job. I was very happy and I even gave them extra money. They came out on a really, really hot day. I put out a thing of water and I was really pleased.