I gave OCS a pretty large job last summer involving (1) the removal of a lot of small, unwanted trees from my back yard, as well as (2) trimming a few main oaks and (3) cleaning dead branches from the rest of the trees. I was quoted and paid about $2000 for the work, which was performed over two days.
Item (1) above was performed as requested, but three beautiful shade trees on my fence line were also removed. The sun sets right behind those trees, which provided shade while I grilled in my back yard. Now I have to deal with the setting sun during the summer and three ugly 10" stumps on the ground.
I feel like this mistake was a result of miscommunication between them as the trees did not bear any resemblance to the trees I wanted removed. The team did not own up to this or offer any remedy. I was out of town when they started, which they told me was fine, and they did not check with me before cutting these down.
Item (2) was performed as requested, and the oaks look good.
By the time item (3) was reached, I felt that the two-man team was exhausted from the prior work and in a hurry to leave, but there was still a lot of unfinished work. The trees were barely cleaned and the sun was setting. Cleaning up the ground and leaving was their main priority.
I spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not to leave a review (8 months now). I'm not angry any more, but my back yard experience is seriously damaged and will continue to be until I spend a lot of time and money fixing it. I want others to learn from my experience and utilize OCS differently than I did.
OCS is friendly and does good work, but I think that the two of them took too big of a job to do quality work on in two days. I originally thought to break the job up into phases (to control my own costs). I should have, as I could have had issues resolved before giving them more work. I also could have supervised better, preventing the loss of my nice shade trees. They are too small of a team to be working consecutive 12 hour days as they were obviously in a hurry to leave by the end. I would not hesitate to have them trim my oaks again, but larger jobs would definitely need to be broken up and supervised. read more
