DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY. Unprofessional. Unreliable. Dishonest. They eventually showed up and…read moredid the work, and that's about the best thing I can say about them. The first contractor I hired showed up, worked for 2 hours and bailed and never bothered to come back the next day, so the fact that these guys even came to my house was an improvement over the first contractor, but that's the only positive thing I have to say.
We negotiated a price of $1600 and shook hands on it. Luka said he's from Texas, so he should place a little higher importance on the value of sticking to your word - a handshake deal in Texas is a legally binding contract you know...
Day one things got off to a bit of a rough start. They said they'd be at my house at 8:30, didn't show up until 10. They charged me for 2 laborers, but the second guy did not show up until later in the afternoon. Once they got going, they made pretty quick work demoing out the cinderblock raised bed planter which was good. They managed to pull 1 of the 3 tree stumps out, but ended up snapping multiple tow straps and getting a flat tire in their bob cat in the process.
They insisted I would need to pay $200 for a chain to pull the remaining stumps out, and that it was going to take an extra day of labor, so the price went up. This was the point where I started getting annoyed, but it's honestly not uncommon for a project to go over time and over budget due to unforeseen circumstances.
The next day, they informed me replacing the tire on their bob cat was going to cost $500 to fix, which is unfortunate for them - but not at all my problem.
I ended up having to pay nearly $300 for a rental bob cat for the second day. Why that became MY problem, I'm really not sure (obviously, they're operating on a shoestring budget and didn't have the cash on hand to pay for the rental up front. Okay... fine. Not actually my problem, but at this point I just want the job done without any more delays.)
Again Luka said "they" would be at my house by 9:30 but didn't actually show up until nearly 11 - this time just Luka by himself, even though he'd already invoiced me for 2 laborers for 2 days. Second laborer never showed up on day two. Also, Luka did not have the chain he supposedly needed me to pay for. At this point I'm getting both very annoyed and wary of the fact that he's trying to pull a fast one on me with the price.
The guy who rented the bobcat to me said he'd be back around 4pm to pick it up, so you'd think that being several hours late getting started and under a time crunch, Luka would have stuck around until the job was done, but he decided to take a lunch break around 1pm, telling me he'd be gone for about a half hour. He came back about almost 2 hours later. At this point there was still a large pile of dirt and one whole tree stump left to remove. Had he showed up when he said he would, and not taken an extremely long lunch break, he might have actually been finished on schedule. At this point I feel like he's doing this to try and force me to pay for an extra day of labor, which I'm not about to do. he invoiced me for 2 laborers for 2 days - so 2 laborers for 1 day and 1 laborer for 2 days seems fair, but I'm not paying another dime.
The rental guy didn't actually show up until around 5pm to pick up the bob cat so Luka had an extra hour to work and in that time he did actually manage to pull the third stump out - however, if he would have taken the advice of the rental guy and just chain sawed out the roots before trying to pull the stumps out he could have saved himself several hours of time and perhaps finished the job in two days as was originally quoted. There is a harbor freight less than a quarter mile from my house, just saying...
Assessing the damage from the day before, they knocked over one of my cacti and threw yard debris on top of my lemon tree sapling.
We're now going into day 3. This morning I went outside and took stock of my tools to find that one of my shovels had gone missing. I'm sure 'by accident'. Annoying, but not the end of the world. Luka texted me this morning he'd be at my house around 10:30. He finally showed up at 1:30 to finish the job.
While I'm satisfied with the work, just about everything else with this project was terrible.