Typical contractor.
Approached them at the start of September.
They were quick to jump on providing an estimate and worked with me to get to itemize my desired work done into budget...but little did I know that's where the fun just started.
Actual work didn't start into middle of October and lasted until after Thanksgiving.
Work done: Pavers, water feature (added waterfall onto existing pond), extend a path from patio to a detached office about 40 yards from my main home using flagstone already on the property.
Total cost quoted: $32K.
Stan is a even tempered guy. He is the face of the company and deals with customers. Behind Stan you have front office lady (who is his accountant) and few solid tenured workers, but also an army of workers who don't speak English very well. Stan provided me this quote and sold me on the workmanship and his relationship with local vendors + his experience doing similar projects.
Once work started the quote started to balloon and additional invoices started to roll in. What you thought was going to be in budget slowly and gradually started turning into something you weren't planning on.
1. Putting irragation pipes into sleeves where there pavers were going to go is extra. About 2K extra. That wasn't in the original quote. Doing this work was put this way - "If the pipe ever breaks (doubtful), you'll need to rip up the pavers to do the fix, but the sleeve will save you the trouble of the potential issue in the future. No doubt, this is the right thing to do, but to spring it on you like, yeah no biggie, it's just an extra 2K is ridiculous.
2. Electricity. You want to have a dedicated circuit for the water feature and a dedicated circuit for the heater you want in the office building. I know we didn't spec that out, but you should do it, if you want it done properly. We'll find you the electrician and we'll dig the trench for you. Sure I said. Additional estimate for the just the trench was nearly 6K. The trench distance was about 130 feet. My jaw dropped. Me and my 12 year son dug 25% of the 18" ditch ourselves and I hired a guy who did the rest in a day for 450 bucks. This was where my trust for this guy vanished. All those smooth talks and nice negotiations went out the window.
3. Paver Patio was quoted to be a lopsided patio where one side was longer than the other. Once work started, Stan's patio paver guy (who spoke with really broken English) asked me if I wanted a symmetrical patio or stick with the lopsided one. I said I wanted a symmetrical one that looks good. Apparently that's EXTRA!!! More invoices. About 2K extra for that. Oh, and we needed to move more irragation hoses. That's extra didn't you know.
4. Same Paver Patio guy started working on the path to my office, and asked me how wide I wanted the path. I showed him where and how I wanted it and is it turned out, what I showed him was different from the size than what was quoted! By adding about 2 feet to the width of the path equated to an additional 2K in charges. (extra 150 linear feet).
Bottom line - $32K turned into over $40K.
That easily could have been near 50 had I gone with this generous offer to dig my trench for my electrical.
This guy runs his business like an airline company. Lots of hidden fees which he claims aren't hidden. Sound familiar? You book your travel, but once your book your hooked into continuing to use the services at hand while the larger project is ongoing. It's like your travel plans are booked and the airline has you baggage, you can't easily go elsewhere for other services until your flight is landed and you've arrived.
I want to end by saying that the actual work done was good. I'm not upset about the work actually done.
Attention to overal detail was good. I've seen a lot worse from different contractors I've worked with. Not A+, but A-.
I would give the following grades:
Pavers: A-
Water feature: A
Flagstone Path: B
Also, the sprinkler guy, Brett is solid. He knows his stuff. Working with him would be the only reason I would go back and use this company again.
The round up this LONG discourse is this: Good work but you pay a premium where you could get the same elsewhere for less. The part that really got to me was the audicity of the trench work. When you quote people for REALLY basic things like trench work for ridiculous prices - you expose yourself because you prices are not defendable, which makes you question the margin that goes into the other not obvious things that are being charged.
These landscape companies have a lot of overhead and they need to cover costs of marketing, search engine seeding, accounting software, salaries, etc... Think this through before engaging with one of these types of company's in the valley. They all probably operate in a similar manner. read more