BEWARE!!!! My husband and I had a nightmare experience with Mark and his crew. For instance, they delivered "fill dirt" full of bark, rocks, railroad spikes, etc. and tried to pass it off as topsoil! His crew raked up some of the debris but did not get it all. (I raked up pails and pails of debris all summer.) Of course, none of the grass they planted could get through all the crap. And, he refused to give me a discount for inferior soil and charged us full price for topsoil. His excuse was he couldn't get any topsoil from his regular topsoil guy. Additionally, he failed to follow anything we wanted done and told me he couldn't remember everything when I confronted him. Another example of our dissatisfaction was my husband and I had to completely redo the steppingstone sidewalk because he didn't think there would be enough stones. I told him over and over that those stones were removed from that exact spot and there were enough stones. He argued that fact and laid them the way he wanted them (leaving 7 - 10 stones extra). When I told him he didn't lay them correctly, he told me it would take too of his time to redo the walk. We tried to live with it, but they were awkwardly spaced so we ended up removing them and putting them in ourselves which required many hours of work. And, of course, there were the perfect number of stones. Also, he charged us for moving dirt in front of my shed, which he did not do and told me I shouldn't have put the shed there in the first place. I could go on and on.
On the day he sent a crew member to collect payment, I looked at the bill and noticed he charged us $1,000 more than the paper quote he gave us. The crew member was very upset and told us he needed to be paid, etc. He called Mark and Mark was at our house within minutes. He stated he hadn't added the bill correctly and I should have caught his mistake. We paid him the agreed to price even though we had to personally go back and fix everything he did wrong, and we paid him for things he "forgot" to do as well which were listed on the quote. We were being more than fair. He was furious with us and stormed our property taking pictures, calling my husband names, and told us he was going to take us to small claims court. I told him I would call the police if they did not leave. He laughed and told us he was friends with the B.C. police and they would ignore my complaint. We were so upset, that later that day I did end up calling the chief of police and he told us not to let them intimidate us and what they did was wrong. I also said I was fearful that Mark would seek retribution by vandalizing our property and wanted something on file concerning my complaint. We couldn't sleep for a few days after the incident and ended up installing security cameras. We are retired and are peaceable people. We were in total shock that this business would use such bullying tactics. After the fact, I talked to two of our neighbors (who I had seen they had done work for) and they told me they were not satisfied with their work either. They said Mark did not listen to what they wanted done...he did what he wanted to do instead. I feel bad as I write this, but I don't want anyone else to live the nightmare we lived. read more