Olson Toon Landscaping Inc
About us
Olson Toon is a full service Design-Build Landscape Company, Landscape Maintenance, Landscape Irrigation, Concrete flatwork, Pool installation and Pool Service company.
Business highlights
Services we offer
Landscaping including retaining wall, aeration, de-thatching, disease diagnosis & lawn renovation., driveway salting, insect control, lawn care including lawn fertilization, mole control, mowing, ornamental tree and shrub care, patios & walkways, plants & planting beds, pruning, sidewalk, snow plowing, snow removal (hauling), spring and fall clean up, water features, weed control
Accepted Payment Methods
- CreditCard
Number of Stars | Image of Distribution | Number of Ratings |
---|---|---|
54% | ||
21% | ||
8% | ||
0% | ||
17% |
"Dear [member name removed]: OT has been fortunate to be able to work with thousands of satisfied customers every year. However, we are still human and there have been mishaps and mistakes on our end along the way. Olson Toon clearly makes a mistake and will happily offer a resolution to your concerns and more importantly apologize for out mistake on timing of arrival. We Do strive for perfection, however a tough goal. We did reach out prior to your negative posts and immediately apologized, and offered a resolution without a response from your end. The job was complete with positive implications, but clearly there are some easily resolvable tweaks that we have offered to take care of. Our policy to work with you on your concerns has not changed, though we prefer to work with customers through direct contact rather than through community discussion. Again, we apologize and we are happy to fix the easily resolvable concerns that you have. If you are interested, please reach us directly through our office number or through email."
I am very pleased with the services overall and the yard looks great. I would definitely recommend them based on their quality services, professionalism and cost.
They came to the house the same week I contacted them to give a nicely itemized quote for all the different services available. We had two additional landscape companies give up quotes and Toons Landscaping was the most competitive quote. Brooks, our contact person, was prompt, personable and professional. The landscape team came the next day on time and did a great job on the spring clean up and mulching. They were very knowledgeable about the different perennials and shrubs and how to prune and clean them up for the spring. The yard looks great and I am looking forward to having them come back to do our fall clean up as well as our spring clean up next year.
"(removed member name) - We are thrilled that you are pleased with the way your yard looks after your Spring Clean-Up and Mulching. Please reach out if you are in need of anything else, we would be more than happy to help you! The OT Team"
Last Spring, the front shrubs planted by Olson Toon didn't survive the winter. In all fairness, I know it was a rough winter. The shrubs were still covered by the builder warranty and Olson Toon was once again, contracted to come out and replace them over the summer. As of this Spring, they are, once again, DEAD.
Our home didn't pass city inspection for the grading work that was performed by Olson Toon. Olson Toon was contracted back to fix the grading. The pitch they created (originally) off of the house was about 3 inches high and about 4 inches past the foundation. When we saw the workers were packing up for the day, we contacted the builder. We had photographs of our entire back yard FLOODING, including the area immediately surrounding the foundation. Olson Toon came back, used a bobcat to replace the dirt they'd removed from the yard earlier in the season, and in doing so, tore up our yard AGAIN. Most landscapers would take care not to create more damage and place press board over the established grass for the Bobcat to drive across, not Olson Toon. We'd spent numerous hours and hundreds of dollars trying to get our lawn into decent enough shape to call it a lawn, only to have them do this. When Olson Toon concluded their work, they left ruts in the yard from the Bobcat. And you can probably guess - we had to fill and repair at our expense.
As for the lawn.... you would have been hard pressed to find a blade of grass among the yard full of weeds. They didn't set up any kind of irrigation system prior to us moving into the home (middle of May 2014). Again, we have invested countless weekends and hundreds of dollars in seed, weed killer and good old fashioned manual "pulling".
Since this is the landscaping portion of the company, I won't get into the cracked concrete or how they ran out of concrete during a pour and determined what they'd done was "good enough".
In our experience, Olson Toon's idea of follow up to complaints is doing a drive by. The only time we were contacted by anyone at the company was during the grading issues, they were accompanied by our builder, and I suspect is only due to the city failing the work.
Working from home I was able to witness their utter lack of professionalism and disregard for property. We ultimately told the builder that Olson Toon was NEVER to step foot on our property.
We are the kind of people that know it's easy to complain about things that go wrong. We're also the kind of people to leave positive review(s) when something is done right. I'd like to say there was something positive that could be said about any portion of the Olson Toon experience. There is not. RUN AWAY!
"Cynthia, we are very sorry that you feel this way and we wish that you would have touched base with us with any continued issues. Olson Toon truly values the opinions of our customers because we understand how important word of mouth is. We do little advertising because our customer satisfaction rate is very high, and a large majority of our customers come to us through client referrals. We have hundreds of satisfied customers over the years, and a lot of those customers are with your builder. This is largely due to the fact that when we know about customers concerns, we always continue to work with them until the issue is resolved. Our extended warranty provides for our customers, even when the fault was not ours. We have a dedicated warranty crew that handles any problems that surface and are brought to our attention. However, if we are not aware of the problem, we will not be able to address the customers concerns. Again, we are sorry that you feel this way, [Member name], and we would be happy to discuss and work through your specific concerns. Please reach out to us at (608) 827-9401 or email us at [email protected]. The OT Team"
OT also seeded our lawn and that turned out much less well, at least initially. Before much of the grass seed had sprouted, we got a big storm that washed out a lot of the grass seed in my yard, OT confirmed they would reseed without further charge to us, but then it took several weeks (in the crucial autumn growing season, too) to get them to come out and do the re-seeding. It seemed that a lot of what sprouted that fall was vegetation other than grass.
The following spring, the seeded portion of my yard was a mass of weeds - at least 40% clover, less than half actual grass. I called to OT to complain about it and was referred to the owner's son, who I believe was named Steve or Scott Olson. He promised he'd come out to look at the yard, but after multiple weeks and multiple telephone calls from me, he never got around to it. I had to complain rather loudly to the receptionist that my yard was looking awful and I was going to start telling people that Olson Wills had seeded it with weeds before I finally got a call back from young Mr. Olson. He came out to my yard, met with me, and agreed that it was bad and told me he would send out his weed control specialist and recommended that I sign up for OT's regular lawn fertilizing and weed control service. No one came out again for weeks and I left repeated messages, finally leaving a message that I was going to complain to Olson's dad and file a BBB complaint if he didn't get something done. Mid-July, over two months after I had initially contacted OT about the weeds, someone finally came out to spray the weeds and apply an herbicidal fertilizer. I had low expectations.
Surprisingly, within a few days I saw lots of dying clover and weeds in my yard. After about 20 days, almost all of the weeds in my yard were not only dead but being replaced by grass. Within six weeks, I had a very full yard of grass almost entirely free of weeds - I could not believe how effective their treatment had been. We signed on for OT's full-service lawn treatment program that we've continued to the present and up until the summer of 2013, had a nicer, thicker lawn free of weeds than almost anyone else in the neighborhood, including those who use lawn care services like Weed Man, and I believe OT is less expensive than those services - we are paying about $200 a year for fertilizing and weed control services that includes one spring application, two summer applications, a fall application and spot treatment.
There have been a few minor issues since 2008. This past summer, their weed control program has not been as effective as in prior years (I'm not sure if this is an issue with the personnel applying the herbicide or a change in chemicals) and I've had to dig a good 30 or 40 dandilions out of my yard by hand. They once aerated my yard and tried to charge me for it when I had specifically declined the service at the beginning of the year. And one other thing they do that is somewhat annoying is that they do not give any warning about when they are coming. It would be nice to have a few day's notice so that I could do a yard patrol cleaning up after my dog or I could make sure my grass is mowed. I believe one time they came right after I had gotten back from a lengthy vacation followed by rains, had not yet been able to mow my lawn for a while and the grass was probably quite a bit higher than would have been optimal for weed control. This may be part of the reason why I had more weeds during the summer of 2013 than in prior years.
However, the really bad service I got from the owner's son is now over half a decade in the past and I can recommend their fertilizing and weed control services. At my old house, I attempted to use products by Scott's and by Menard's for weed control and never had much luck with it. In contrast to my experiences on my old house's lawn, OTand quot;s weed control works and their fertilizer has given me one of the nicest lawns in the neighborhood. My next door neighbor started having a massive weed problem, he asked me what service I use and he then began using OT with excellent results, too. I don't have any recent experience with their landscaping service, but the landscape architect with whom we worked in 2007 was extremely helpful and had excellent ideas. So this is by no means a perfect business, but I recommend them and continue to use them for my lawn service.
He doesn't let his employees do any call-backs or make decisions that might result in a refund or repair at his expense -
so I am left with a bare area where his company seeded. He doesn't respond. My neighbor is a soil scientist - and says this situation is not right - so who am I to believe ? A university professor who is a soil scientist ? Or a businessman who is just too busy to respond to my calls and emails ? Do I have to put in a new lawn myself? The grass growing season is ending. Grade F on response to problems that arise after the money is paid.
The job went well overall..ours was a smaller job and we waited a bit for them to get started, or fit us in. We were't really in a rush, so it was fine.
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