Strap in, this is a wild ride that's VERY common with Mike's Landscaping.
My issues started when we hired Mike to do our driveway for the winter. We had 8 snowfalls that winter that would have required him to come. He didn't show up 4 of those 8 times, and had to be chased the other 4. I was annoyed, and when he kept making posts online looking for new customers, I pointed out that he should be working to satisfy the ones he has. My fiance received a message almost immediately, in which I was asked to remove my comment. I didn't want to, but did.
My fiance then decided to give Mike another shot, despite my insisting we hire someone better. We needed our old walkway if stones lifted, and laid again but flat. We paid up front for the whole job. Mike came, took 23 minutes to lift the stones, left them strewn across my front lawn, and left to "buy supplies."
We didn't see him again. We would send messages where he would read them and ignore them. It dawned on me the last time he replied, it was because I made a comment on a Facebook post. So I did. And true to form, this is when we got a reply.
I was over it, he pulled up our stones in early May, and this is now WEEEEEEEEKS later, and I have a muddy trench for a walkway. I told him I would keep reviewing until I got a refund. He agreed to refund and we even agreed to a payment plan (which means he took our money and spent it elsewhere since he didn't have it OR supplies to give back). A month later - he's now missing his payments. So back to public comments I went. Mike's reply? He called the police. Over truthful bad reviews. So when the officer came to my door, he was able to see the mud trench he had to avoid, see the messages and the payment plan, see that Mike hasn't paid, and see that every single review I left was truthful. He saw our video doorbell footage of Mike working for under 30 minutes. He told Mike to pay as as per agreement.
Mike never finished paying us back. He told us he was keeping $100 for "loss of business" and that he would take us to court if we tried to fight it. A small claims file is $100, so this was absolutely by design. We let it go because it's painfully obvious that his business is a failure and he needs the money more than I do - but had he taken me to court, with all the texts and video footage I have, he would be paying all my fees and the $1300 I paid to fix his work.
Save yourself the headache. Go literally anywhere else in town. read more