First Grade Excavating helped my husband and I solve many problems in our back yard. They had great ideas and very reliable workers. We feel we got a great deal, as my husband and I are a bit older, we never felt pressure or uncomfortable in any aspect of our dealings with First Grade. Would recommend them in a heart beat!!! Thanks for everything. read more

Between my house and my neighbors, water would pool up from my neighbor's gutters being forever clogged and the ground not being graded properly. We needed to have the yard graded right to allow excess water to drain away from the house to prevent water pooling up next to the foundation. Our experience has been pretty awful. My husband had three bids and we went with this company because he promised it would be fixed, the price was right, and he said he would do some extra things like lift up our fence and fill in with dirt around the house that others weren't going to do. On the day of the work being done, the crew spent maybe two hours at my house. One of those was fixing their machine which broke in my neighbor's yard. They dug a huge path between our houses, installed two window buckets and left. My husband and I (and the neighbors) assumed they would be back to finish the rest, but they did not return. Within a day my husband called the owner and told him that his employees did not do the right job, and that what he discussed with him was not done. They did nothing with the fence, and the window buckets were installed without putting the dirt around them (I ended up putting some dirt in them later) and they dumped the leftover dirt in our front yard. The owner said he wanted my husband to be happy and would come back and take a look. For the past two months my husband and the owner would play phone tag. As of today, we have not received a bill so we figured he was going to try to make it right before billing us, because why wouldn't we have a bill already if he was going to screw us? A couple days ago my husband made arrangements to meet with him at the house, and waited around for an hour before leaving. No phone call saying he was going to be late--an hour later he called to see if my husband was still there but he got tired of waiting. Today my husband talked with the owner on the phone and expressed the disappointment with the work, and that it was not what was discussed and wanted it fixed or to not pay the full amount, since the full amount of work was not completed. The owner became belligerent on the phone, cursing at my husband and threatening to put a lien on our house. He said he did not say he would do some of the things that were discussed before, he did not care whether we were happy or not, he wanted his money, and that he goes to court a lot so he would win (paraphrasing). Take in mind, once again, we have not received a bill yet from this company to pay and he has stood up my husband a few times. We have had the money to pay for this for months, we mistakenly thought that this was a man of his word and was going to try to make it right and he was just busy so we got put on the back burner. I would definitely NOT recommend this company. Unfortunately we have learned a hard lesson about getting what you pay for and will be looking for another company to finish the job. I normally would never just blast a company on social media, but cursing and threatening my husband is where I draw the line. read more

Their work was really good. They showed up on the time that they said they would be here and work very quickly. All of the work was done quite professionally. The work was to level out my backyard and entry to the back yard from the front yard. I only had 4 foot to get through the gate to get the dirt and everything moved. They used plywood over some walkways not to damage them. They reworked all the sprinkler heads to raise them to the new level where the dirt was put in. They also put dirt next to the house underneath my wooden deck that needed to have some fill. They moved a full truckload of dirt in about 4 hours. Leveled all the low spots and field in other areas that had holes. I am very satisfied with their professional work. read more

Less than pleased. They were paid in June to install window wells in July and excavate our yard late Aug-early Sept. and it has taken until today for them to, unexpectedly, show up to do the work. My husband gets a voicemail every time he calls. He has had some correspondence via text and Rick will never commit to a day or time. Rick has told us several times that he will be there next week sometime. My husband is always the one that has to reach out to them when they don't ever show. We've asked that they at least give a days notice. We were last told again that they will be there next week sometime. They show up today, while we're at work, without any notice and scared my children by walking around our back yard. They tore the fence down and let our dog out. Our 12 year old daughter had to chase our dog around the neighborhood to get her home. I'm beyond frustrated with this company. Very poor customer service. read more