Cutting Edge Tree Service

The person who did the estimate was not the person who came with the crew to do the work. At the time of the estimate I had not yet gotten all of the brush pulled but I showed the estimator, who I thought was going to actually do the work, what had yet to be done by me. At least I believe I did. I got a call while the estimator was here so maybe I didn't tell him. I can't be certain. A couple of days later, and about an hour after I signed and mailed the contract with Cutting Edge, I received an estimate from another service provider with whom I've done business in the past. By that time I had all the brush pulled and stacked. Their estimate was for $200. So that company clearly knew the work that had to be done. However, I had already sent in the contract to Cutting Edge and decided I would pay them the same $200 since I couldn't clearly remember what I had told their estimator. When Cutting Edge arrived virtually the first thing I heard was a complaint about the size of the stack of brush and that they wouldn't chip it since everything still had the root balls. I've had huge piles of brush chipped in the past and that provider simply cut the root ball off, shredded the rest and threw the root ball in the back of his truck. After explaining to Cutting Edge my past experience, and that their estimator had seen the brush with the root balls, he said he would cut the them off but refused to take them. That, of course, left me with a mess to deal with. I hadn't yet had a chance to tell him I would pay him the $200 and at that point I decided he was going to get the $175 only. After the work was done I made it clear I would have paid the $200 but under the circumstances that was off the table and I was not going to call them in the future. At that point he decided to take the maybe 20 smallish root balls. That left me with a pile of dirt equal to about 6 cu ft. piled in my drive. The project I was working on was about 20' from the pile of dirt but he wasn't interested in doing a full clean-up. I said fine I would move the dirt. Unfortunately, within about an hour after Cutting Edge left it suddenly rained, as the saying goes, cats and dogs. About 1.5 inches in less than an hour. That washed a good portion of the dirt pile into a bed of decorative rocks used to cover a drainage system along the edge of the drive. Now I'm left with having to dig out those rocks to get the dirt out while disturbing the drainage system as little as possible. That isn't directly the fault of Cutting Edge but if they had come in with a positive attitude and properly cleaned up they would have had the extra $25 and I wouldn't have what will likely be 2-3 hours of work to clean out the drainage system. I've used 3 other services for this type of work in the past. One spent a total of about 8-10 hours chipping hundreds of Buckthorn trees that I either pulled up or cut down. Then they spent probably 4 hours grinding out various stumps during the subsequent 2-3 years. That company faced basically the same issues as Cutting Edge but did it professionally. I would have had them back but I lost track of their contact info. While Cutting Edge made some effort to satisfy their customer, me, it was half-hearted and done begrudgingly. I can't picture ever having them back.