I am a firm believer in you get what you pay for. From my research, Guerrini is the most expensive in the area for contracted landscape companies. I am not against paying top dollar for top work, although in this economy I would expect all businesses to realize the clock has turned back in favor of the consumer, not self serving companies. Fortunately, many of those companies have gone out of business or been forced to changed their business model. Good will and good business practice makes for strong referrals and increased revenue. I, foolishly have this ideology that you treat your customer as you want to be treated. Again, I, foolishly would expect companies to stand behind their product and work performance and provide honest, straightforward disclosure of benefits and risks prior to performing work.
Well, here is my story about this one company and my direct communication with it's owner, Kevin Guerrini. I have taken the emotion out of this situation and am relaying simple facts.
We had contracted with this company last September for two projects, replacing our walkway and creating a new flower bed in our back yard, which required some redesigning of our front yard flower beds and transplanting of some of the plants to the back. As I mentioned above, their fees were expensive, however, with their name well known in town, we agreed to pay more than anticipated believing we would be getting superior communication and work.
The walkway was done with a few minor hiccups, but overall we were satisfied, although not the exact design we thought. The young gentleman who handled both the walkway project and flower bed was Colin. I could not ask for a more courteous and professional representative. He was genuine, timely and communicated well.
At first we were happy with the new bed in the back yard and the transplanting of a couple of plants from the front bed.
At the end of March we contacted Guerrini for a third project, which would have created 2 additional beds, one in the front of the house and an additional bed in the back yard. During their visit to assess the work, we noticed that two plants that were transplanted last fall were not rooted well. After seeing this, he said they were fine, stomped his foot around the roots of both plants. Within 2 weeks of this visit, we noticed that both plants were brown and dead.
I contacted Colin by telephone. I obviously wanted to address this situation before finalizing and moving forward with the third project. He advised me there was a risk of transplanting plants, which he said was noted on our contract. I informed him that our contract did not have that disclosure and reminded him that we never had any conversation of risk. It should be noted that these 2 plants cost approximately $80 in total. He agreed to replace them after he confirmed this language was not in our contract. I was very happy with that remedy and appreciative. Later in the day, Colin called me apologetically and said "I have some bad news for you". He stated that after talking with Kevin, Kevin informed him he would not stand behind his work and refused to replace these plants due to known risks of transplanting, while admitting this language was missing from him contract, as he claims is standard language on all of his contracts. Of course, with this company already being paid over $2,000 from the previous projects and about to earn another $700 with the proposed project, I was caught off guard by this decision to retract their earlier commitment to remedy this situation. I told Colin to have Kevin call me right away so I can discuss. He said he did not want to talk with me to discuss. I explained very clearly that this business decision was irresponsible and I would handle this with all legal remedy, including making sure anyone who searches out social sites for customer feedback would in fact be aware of this business and its practice of not backing the quality of their work. I also advised I would advise my development board members in hopes of reviewing our current contract with Guerrini, in which we pay him over $14,000 annually. I received a phone call back from Colin who said Kevin would agree to replace these 2 plants. I expressed appreciation, although I felt it should never have gotten to the point I had to let this business know we would not be played for fools and would push back. I then began talking about the third project, at which point, I was advised that because I didn't accept their original terms of replacing these plants for an additional fee, Kevin did not want to do business with me. It should have been me, the consumer, refusing future business with Guerrini, however, I was willing to let bygones be bygones.
Kevin called me direct and began yelling at me for threatening his business. I said, I am going to tell the truth and he should consider reviewing how he handles customer situations in the future.
Not recommended. read more
