ComplaintsforBudget Outdoor Tree & Landscaping LLC

• Initial Complaint

  07/28/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Unresolved

  More info

  Date: 12/31/2021 Amount Paid: $33,579.83 (plus $4,800 for another smaller job) Company Committed to Provide: renovation of front and backyard including grading of backyard, building of retaining wall in backyard and multiple tiered walls in front yard, installing multiple french drains and tying them into the gutters, breaking up several and replacing some concrete slabs, and others. Nature of Dispute: Work started in December and was told it would take 1-2 months - it has been 7+. Front yard has yet to be started. Back yard has yet to be finished. Company has caused multiple damages to home and not repaired them after saying they would or paying me back after I had to get them dealt with including: filling sewer with gravel requiring cleaning and hydro-jetting, damaging gutter with machinery, damaging backyard spigot with machinery, shattering a window, running over garden with machinery, gravel/stones/trash dumped all over yard/neighbor's yard, damaging road in front of house by letting gravel sit, multiple times they disconnected my gutters allowing water to dump into yard & basement. They have stopped responding to texts, calls, or phone messages, they do not come out when they say they will, their workers now rarely show up and only work for an hour or two before leaving, they never finished grading the backyard (so water is pooling in multiple places) and they are trying to cover it with grass as though it were finished. And much more, but I don't have more room to write about anything else. They have demonstrated that they can no longer be trusted to complete the job correctly. Has business tried to resolve: When I first spoke with them about fixing/finishing, they were apologetic and said they would get my job done soon. Since then, I have had different people working here every 2 weeks who have no idea what others have done or needs to be done or care. ***** no longer listens/responds when I message her.

  Business response

  08/27/2022

  I have recently responded to *** ******'s complaint by certified by certified mail which i will attach a copy for your refrence. I want to state that my contract states that i will be allowed access to property and the week before we were scheduled to be on site and work toward our target completion date we were denied access to property and told we could not complete job. I will state again I am asking that Budget Outdoor be allowed on the property to complete the job we were hired to do.

  Customer response

  08/29/2022

  Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:
  
  
  

  I received the forwarded message from you which I presume ***** ******* sent to your bureau.  It does not address or even mention any of the concerns that I have, and talks as though they have done nothing wrong, that I haven't tried to fix this problem, and that somehow I am the issue with work being completed.

  
  

  First off, they did not mention that I asked for Arbitration because I can no longer trust her word or the word of her workers - after they have spent 8 months not completing the work that they said would only take 1-2 months (the job started on 2021-12-13).  I have been told multiple times by multiple people that they would be done with a portion of the job "by the end of the week" - and it is still not done now months later.  Nor does it mention that I asked for Arbitration back on 2022-07-26, or that she did nothing to start the Arbitration process, or notify me how I would have to do it.  She also has not responded about the arbitration so I'm just sitting around waiting for anything to progress.
  
  

  Secondly, they don't respond to the fact that they have done thousands of dollars of damage to my property, and have not paid or refunded any amount of money - despite being asked to multiple times.  This includes filling my sewer access with gravel, smashing my gutters, damaging a spigot, directing the drainage from my yard into my neighbor's driveway, pushing over my other neighbor's retaining wall so it is falling into their driveway, repeatedly leaving their work in such a state that water would leak into my basement worse than before they did any work, etc.  Nor does it mention that they asked for the second payment we agreed to earlier than the contract said - and I obliged like an idiot.  The work which that payment was supposed to be for was *never started* even though the payment was made in April - it is now August.

  
  

  Third, they don't mention how they did not show up for weeks at a time across multiple months, despite me calling them asking where they were - they would not even respond to me (in any way) for weeks at a time.

  
  

  Fourth, every landscaper who has seen the one retaining wall they DID build (out of the 6 they were supposed to) has said that the wall needs to be rebuilt because it is already leaning after less than 6 months (its more like 3 months).  They even sent an engineer out to look at the property, and their engineer said the wall was constructed incorrectly.

  
  

  Their response of "we aren't being allowed on the property" is a deliberate deception leaving out the extremely important facts of our situation.  It is also inaccurate because after I told them I wanted arbitration (three weeks after) they came out to pick up some of their random equipment and trash, and after seeing how incredibly dangerously placed my AC unit was, the company owner asked if she could set it down in a less dangerous position - which I allowed while I watched them do it.  They also tried to leave the AC in such a state that it would fall over -> TWICE.  Meaning it took them 3 attempts (where they said they were done two times) to get the AC to sit flat on the shoddily placed concrete blocks and wood boards.  It also doesn't mention that this was the first time ***** ******* had ever seen how the AC had been sitting, and it had been that way for multiple months.  Or that I have been asking to speak with ***** ******* for months with either no response or that ***** ******* would come out to see - and then never show up.

  
  

  Please let me know how I can add the following information as context for their response, because their response is a complete fabrication.

  
  

  
  
  Sincerely,
  
  **** ******

  Business response

  09/02/2022

  I ***** ******* would like to state *** ****** did not comply with the terms of agreement and i take acception to all *** ******s comments. My engineer consultant did not preform a field investigation nor did he see the sight before the major rain storm events.

  Thank you,

  ***** ******* 

  Customer response

  09/07/2022

  Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:
  
  

  I reject her response.  It is not entirely factual and is misleading.

  
  

  "Her" engineer is a man named *** *********.  He called me because ***** put us in contact, but he has no idea who I was or why he was calling me.  After talking for a while, we figured out that ***** wanted him to inspect the wall that her company built in my backyard.  Before we finished our conversation, *** made it VERY clear that he barely knew *****, and that their working relationship was limited to one previous instance where she had worked for him as a third party builder on another project.  He said that he always warned ***** that she needed to properly engineer her walls before building them.  He remembered coming out to my house previously (now months ago), and that he inspected the site so that he could engineer the wall - but that ***** did not hire him for that job, i.e. he is not her engineer on my project.

  
  

  As for inspecting the wall, ***** is accurate that *** ********* only looked at the wall (but did not do a proper inspection).  *** told me that he determined that the wall was not properly constructed because it was lacking the ability for water to sleep through from behind the wall to in front of it.  He said he did not do an inspection because he did not dig up/disassemble the wall to actually see how it was constructed.

  
  

  ***** is correct that *** ********* the engineer did not see the yard before the major rain storm event, but I fail to see how that matters in the slightest.  That doesn't change the fact that the yard was not level before - I have photos before the rains as proof.  That doesn't change the fact that she told her worker to go spread grass seed and straw on top of the unleveled ground, a couple days before the afore mentioned major rain storm.  Nor that she denied having told her worker to do that, so apparently she has no control over what is or is not done on my job site.  Nor does it account for every other problem I mentioned before or could go over again.

  
  

  I completely reject that I did not comply with the terms of the agreement.  I have gone out of my way many, many times to allow and assist ***** and her team of people do the work agreed to in our contract.  My collection of information that I shared with ***** demonstrates that fact over and over again.  ***** and her company are in fault of not complying with our agreement.  I have now had 7 different landscapers come out and look at my property to determine what work was done and what work is required to finish the job.  All 7 of them have said that this is the worst landscaping job they have ever seen.  Two of the landscapers even said they had trouble believing that a landscaper would leave a job in this state.  That alone is definitely a breach of our contract as part of the contract says something to the extent of that the work should be comparable to that done by other landscapers.  It was also quoted as need 1-2 months, and I did not prevent ***** or or workers from doing work on my property until 2022/07/26, which is over 7 months from the start date of 2021/12/13.

  
  

  Thank you,

  **** ******

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