HEAD TO TOE LANDSCAPING INC

His workers showed up on time, they were tidy about their work, did a very acceptable job of enlarging the bed (we did the plantings) and extending the rock wall  a bit so that it extended more gracefully around the new bedding area.  They did a beautiful job on the slate placement for the rest of the patio, and built a place for the fountain to be placed in a pond site within the patio.  Here's where things turned south.

We changed nothing in the design, we bought a good deal of the supplies up front, as his markup was pretty steep, but we knew that.  However, we learned that we needed to go over the bills VERY carefully - more than once we were charged, for instance, with 'tractor time', when we happened to have been home during the work day, and that tractor never moved!  He insisted it had an 'hour meter' on it, and I assured him I was working all day in a room that looked out on where that tractor sat, and it had not even been started, much less moved.   And these were just the things that we could concretely argue.  The rest was really 'his word' or had been vaguely worded in our contract (so good learning there, alone), and we couldn't dispute, but by then we were not feeling comfortable with the way he was handling the bid.  In the end, we stopped the project, as he was already more than $2000 over budget (25% !), and to fight him in court would just cost more.  Too bad - the work his guys did was very nice; his business dealings were such that I would not use him again, nor recommend him.