We recently purchased a property that is closer to friends & family who reside in Newport Coast & Dana Point. We were in the process of getting bids for front yard & backyard landscaping. I made an appointment with Joseph (owner of Mirage Landscape) for Thursday June 4th at 11:00AM and he texted me the day prior to confirm. I have the screenshot of his confirmation just in case he doesn't quite remember. Joseph arrived on time. He, myself & my wife walked the entire property and discussed ideas at length along with providing many detailed suggestions. He also showed us screen shots of another project he did in the past years within a neighboring development. Before concluding our consultation, he stated his architectural fee to do the detailed landscape drawings and said that he would send us a quote for the overall job on Monday (June 8th). Furthermore he stated that upon receiving the quote, should we decide to move forward, he would then come back and provide a more thorough walk through etc. Well, that was almost 3 weeks ago when we met and we never heard a word back from Joseph. No follow up communication whatsoever in any form. This is a very personalized service so it's not like ordering something online with a huge company where the order was simply lost. This is a small business that requires an in person appointment. So in my opinion, it is a conscious decision to not follow up, follow through or make contact of any kind. I gave ample time for him or anyone from the company to get back to us should something have happened and I added thorough details in this review so he knows exactly who this is. I completely understand things that come up, but professional etiquette is to alert the client as soon as possible. And unfortunately, we were not given any consideration. Follow up is the company's responsibility, not the clients. I am not interested in Joseph's honors or awards for Mirage Landscape as much as I am interested in him as a business owner following proper protocol and business etiquette. He dropped the ball on this for whatever reason so I strongly feel that any reply to this review after the fact is only to support his own reputation. I say this because my wife initially found his work on "Houzz" impressive, but had I read the less than positive comments in a couple of the reviews here on Yelp that echoed similar problems with Joseph's lack of follow up, I would've reconsidered booking the appointment and not allowed him to waste any of our time. There are no excuses for his failure to communicate on any level. If you cannot do the job or if it is a job that you would rather pass on, then you should have been professional enough to make another recommendation. How you handled this comes across as you are too caught up personally to extend yourself professionally. I will not refer him to anyone based upon his complete disregard to follow up with us after our in person meeting.
***UPDATE 6/26/20***
Today I received an email from Joseph stating that he was "perplexed" as to who left the review but after some research he realized who it was. He also stated that he emailed the quote on June 7th. His email today included the quote, but it was an original email from today, no forwarding information from June 7th.
Joseph, let me be very clear, I did not receive ANY quote from you until today! Not my inbox, nor my spam has had anything from you. Secondly, if that was the case, why didn't you re-forward me the original email & quote you sent on June 7th that would have the original date and time stamp? Instead, you concluded your email by asking me to reconsider my honest review of my personal experience. Nowhere in your email was an apology and you somehow managed to express how important your online image is for a small business like yourself. You should have carefully re-read that before you sent that in writing! In situations like this, you should have issued an apology & given the quote, plain and simple. You continue to come across as being more concerned with your reputation than genuine sincerity towards us and this is not the time for that. What did you do to actually gain us as customers as you stated you've done for others? Understand this, the hard work you say you've done to please other customers we honestly did not receive so no, I will not consider removing the review. I guarantee if you were that interested in the job there would've been appropriate follow up! It's simple, treat people the way you want to be treated. We will not engage in further discussions. Accountability is everything and humility goes a long way. read more