I had five very large trees with big limbs that overhung my home and was going be a real problem if we were to have any storms upcoming this season.
I called a tree service that advertises on a local radio station. Their representative came a few days later and gave me a price which I felt was reasonable. The rep said that once I approved the estimate that their crew would be in touch to schecule the job.
I approved the estimate but it took 30 days for them to set up a date to do the job. When the crew finally came to do the job and had unloaded their equipment, the foreman said "there is no way that I can do this job for the price that was agreed on" and he just told his men to reload and leave.
So I called the office and asked them "what is going on"? The lady that runs the company said that they could not honor the price that they had given me. She suggested that their representative come back for another look. After about a week the rep came back, looked at the job again and said that he would talk to the owner and then let me know something the next day. When I called them back they told me that the job would be $1500 higher than the original bid and it could possibly be another 30 days until they could schedule the job again. I told them I was very unhappy that they were not going to honor their reps price. The owner of the company actually told me that their rep had underbid some other jobs and that they were going to have to eat those jobs. She went on to tell me about the high cost of workmens comp insurance, labor costs, fuel costs etc and I told her that I had also been in several businesses in my life, was very aware of the cost to operate a business, BUT always honored my prices as they were stated to my customers. (At that point I told her that just maybe she should revisit her relationship with her estimator).
A few days later my wife happened to see one of Griffins Tree Care trucks on the highway with their phone number. I called that evening and Joe Griffin himself came out the next day and gave me a price that was substantially lower than the first companies original price. During that conversation Mr Griffin noticed that the largest tree that I was concerned about had a couple of large branches which overhung my house and said they could do that one first and then come back to do the others (which did not present an immediate problem) later.
His crew acutally came two days later on a "Saturday", removed the worrisome limbs, cleaned up the debris that they had cut and said they would be back ASAP. They returned just 6 days later and removed the rest of the trees, cleaned up all of the brush, limbs, stumps etc. I would like to also add that before even starting they put down large mats on my lawn so that their machinery would not tear up the sod.
Joe Griffin's crew did an excellent job of felling the trees without damaging adjacent buildings, fences and shrubberies and honored his original price.
I feel that speaks volumes about Joe Griffin, his company, equipment and employees.
As for the original company from the radio ad, I WOULD NOT LET THEM TRIM A CRISTMAS TREE!
Jim M., Crystal River read more
