If I could offer no star, I would.
Dave Gugger is a joke, a coward and highly misleading in his work ethic and skill. He provided us with services which included underground drainage from our foundation, removal of crushed stone (from a previously laid above-ground pool), ground leveling, sod-placement and construction of 2 gardens made from Penn flagstone. NONE of these jobs were done correctly.
The crushed stone still lies beneath our new sod and constantly dries out because the proper amount to create an appropriate depth for grass roots to grow was not removed. The stone gets too hot in the sun and burns the grass from the root up. After 2-3 days of no water, there is a perfect 33' round patch of dead grass in my yard, reminding us of the pool long-gone. The gardens BOTH fell within 2 weeks of being built - one of which was put together by a temp; a 16-yo young man who was happy to admit this was his first rock wall! The stones used were NOT what we had ordered as he did not properly obtain the product we wanted in time. He snuck in random round boulders which was the baseline to it's eventual fail. I personally had to remove all the stones, gather new material and rebuild the gardens myself. Plants that were supposed to be REMOVED before building the garden (variegated hostas) were not taken out properly and I still struggle with constantly having to weed out the persistent babies of the larger plants that make their way through the soils. As anyone with hosta-removal experience knows, you PAY to have someone remove them properly because if they are not, they will keep coming back! They are choking out the rest of my plants and it is extremely discouraging. The drainage pipe that was installed leaks out to a location less than 20' from our foundation and is at a 15degree grade HIGHER than the foundation itself - so all the water that is removed seeps right back into our basement. Our investemnt of a dehumidifier was probably the best in our whole experience - but that of course was only AFTER we constantly find 2-4 inches of water in our basement.
Of all the things, here is my biggest, sincerest complaint.... when he was confronted with the problems we were having, he repeatedly refused to reply to emails, would not answer his phone. Once, we got him to answer (when he must not have checked to see if it was us) and he pulled the good ol' fashioned "Hello? HELLO? I can't hear you. *click*" Another time, he had the audacity to tell me (during the period of my extremely frequent and frustratingly unanswered phone calls) that he was on vacation where he dropped his phone and broke it. Now, I understand everyone needs a vacation - and I totally understand accidents happen. But I also know that when you, as the OWNER, are on a 3-week vacation and you lose your phone the FIRST day, you would likely try to pick up a new one, or at least set up your answering account to say "On vaca, I'll return your call as quickly as I am able." Perhaps a vaca-message on your webpage?? Nothing but dead air from this guy.
As a business owner myself, I am shocked that any owner would treat paying customers, and good fair people, with such disregard. We did not ask much of him when it came to fixing the problems. We asked that he either get out to our home and fix ALL the errors he and his crew had made or to refund us JUST OUR LABOR COST!!! Just the labor. We'll keep the product and do the damn work ourselves (and better than he did!) But he ignored us.
I apologize to those who look for a short yay-or-nay review - but there is no way I'm going to let this extremely poor businessman slide for the damages he has done. We are now slated to have our entire back yard excavated to remove the stone he was paid to do in the first place. I do not apologize to Dave for this scathing review - which will be passed to the BBB and Atty General.
Thanks for ruining our yard, DG.
The Touma Family. read more
