Built a new home and needed landscape (LOTS of dirt, grass and mulch). They came to the house and provided an estimate.
The first day the owner had his employees come to level the yard and remove the weeds. They did 3/4 of the yard and ran out of dirt. The next day they came and laid mulch, top soil and planted the seeds, with out raising the 1/4 of the yard they left the day before.
I called the owner and he said that "it's supposed to be like that for grading purposes" but would come back and add more dirt. They came back and added more dirt only to a small section of where it was originally missed. I called them back again and after going back and forth, his father came over to talk with my husband. His father said that "it will be fine" and "we worked with what you paid for." We paid for what we were told, for what they calculated. Father and son continuously contradicted each other and contradicted themselves from previous conversations. He finally apologized and told us that there was a miscommunication between him and his father and they would come fix the rest of it, since they didn't order enough dirt.
He came over and we explained that the whole 10ft side of the house needed to be raised... the beds and grass area. A few days later he came to do the job and I specifically asked if he added dirt to the whole section and he said YES. When I got home that was not the case because you could see that the freshly growing grass was not covered with additional dirt. I asked him again and the story changed to "we added it under the beds and an inch was raked into the grass area." HERE IS THE KICKER.... we pulled back the barrier under the mulch bed and you could see a line where the new dirt was added. The dirt was not added to the grass area, nor was it added under the whole mulch bed area.
The mistake was done and they where "willing" to fix it but always tried to cut corners and thought we were naive. At no point was there a complaint about how much I was being charged. There was no expectation the job would be done for free. My advice is to truly listen to your customers, and don't make excuses. There would have been no issues in admitting fault, recalculating and requesting additional payment for additional top soil. Their website states "making sure it gets done right the FIRST TIME," my experience on a 1/4 of my yard was far from that. read more