TL:DR -
Joe Jr is an incredibly unprofessional business owner and shockingly unknowledgeable about landscaping. We are now working with our credit card company and the courts to rectify the situation as Joe was fully unwilling to respond, listen, or work with us about his incomplete and incompetent "work".
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I booked Joe's to work on our condo landscaping. He was very responsive, came out and gave me a quote in the same day.
Issues began immediately with our work being pushed back two weeks. Then showing up 4 hours after the time they said they would. They were late everyday, causing me to have to wait for a few hours until they showed up to let them in.
It was all downhill from there. Not one single thing we requested and paid for was actually properly finished.
They never finished removing the brick border. They improperly installed a below-ground plastic border ABOVE ground which was faster for them rather than taking the time to do the spade shovel border we paid for.
We requested they remove two garden sections. They only did this from the surface and didn't even turn the soil! They then threw grass seed on packed soil. Two days later all the plants were growing back.
(At 5.5 months pregnant, I was out front in the sun and heat, tilling the soil, removing the old garden roots and reseeding this for several hours.)
The front lawn was very patchy and was to be prepped and reseeded. It wasn't mowed, raked, and prepped to receive grass seed. There were leaves everywhere and they just aerated over the unprepared lawn and threw about 1/8 of the grass seed needed to properly reseed. They didn't even bother to water it even though the sprinkler was sitting right there.
(I had to have our regular lawn care people cut the grass short and then spent several hours in the front yard prepping and reseeding the entire yard.)
Two large bushes in the back needed to be removed. They were, surprisingly, removed. But, they did not quote us for removing the stumps (which they knew they needed to do because they were installing sod over the top). So they up-charged us for that mid-process.
They didn't properly prep the lawn underneath where they were installing the sod and didn't finish the edges to be level with the rest of the yard- just threw it over the top.
(When it was clear these sections of sod were turning brown and dying, my husband and I took a few hours to dig out the old lawn underneath and level the sod with the rest of the yard. After some extra seeding, watering, and fertilizing by us, it finally took.)
When it came time for Joe to leave, he texted me that it was finished. I went out back and he was walking out the back gate and said to make sure to leave him a review. Never did a walkthrough. I went to the front and immediately saw issues and emailed him right away. He never responded. I emailed him a second time and he responded the following day that reseeding the front yard wasn't their priority (?!?) and they did everything satisfactorily.
When I discovered more issues two days later, I sent him a long email detailing all the issues, cc'ing the condo treasurer, asking him to hold off on final payment until we could get this resolved. (We paid deposit on a personal CC and told Joe we would pay remainder via check to avoid them passing on their own business CC fee to us).
Unbeknownst to us, Joe charged our card the second he left which is why we never heard from him about his incomplete and unprofessional work. He had the money and didn't care one bit about the (lack of) work.
When the treasurer confronted him about this, he said we never complained, sited contracts I have no copy or record of and certainly didn't sign. He refused to listen or rectify any of the issues saying they did the work (despite photographic proof he did not).
Incompetent. Unprofessional. Please avoid! read more
