I don't understand why anyone in her or his right mind would do business with Out of a Limb tree service. I had the following problems:
Crew arrived late
I first met with owner Randy Bixby on Thursday, June 3. The company was unable to schedule an appointment until Monday, August 16. The week before August 16, the scheduler called to say that the appointment had been moved to Monday, August 23, the crew to arrive at 8:45 a.m. I got a call that morning to say that they would be late, because they still had work that had not been completed the previous Friday. Two young men arrived at 10 a.m., and three and a half hours had been alloted for them to complete the work on my property. Because the work was not done to my satisfaction, Bixby, in a very terse and angry phone call on Tuesday, April 24, called to say that he would come to my home on Wednesday, April 25, between 9 and 9:30 a.m. I waited until 10:30 a.m., and then had to run an important errand away from the house. I got a call that evening from Bixby, informing me that he had come onto my property, done some work without me being home, what I consider a form of trespass.
Crew was young, unsupervised, not well-informed
These young men went to a small tree in the backyard first, assuming that was the tree that I wanted to have removed. I had to lead them to the taller privet. I felt that I needed to babysit them in the backyard. They balked at removing one limb that I had told Bixby that I wanted to have removed, and it never was cut. They began to cut limbs that I didn't want cut. Worst of all, they massacred one of my two favorite trees on the property, a Texas redbud. My husband and I had carefully pruned it over the years, and now it is mangled, its beautiful limb structure and leafy canopy destroyed. How it now looks breaks my heart--it will never be the same! I explained to the one young man how I wanted it trimmed and he didn't follow my instructions. The 22-year-old man from Puerto Rico didn't speak English. Who knows how much English he understood? The other young man translated a great deal. I did not supervise these lads when they worked the front and sides of the house--to my lasting regret.
Clean-up was horrible
It is mid-day, August 26, and I, a 70-year-old woman, have spent seven hours cleaning up the property so that it looks like it did before the Out on a Limb two-man crew arrived. And I had helped them in the backyard removing limbs to a pile that was to be taken out front. My own work the last three mornings includes lifting and cutting apart two very large, heavy limbs in a flower bed, reaching high with a rake into the Eastern redbud to remove cut limbs that were still in the tree, raking all the lawns, front and back, where limbs had fallen, sweeping all sidewalks and gutters.
Two-man crew was overbooked, overworked
I think the reason why the clean-up was horrible was because they crew was overbooked. The crew had to take time to put back into place the things that I could not. Lift a heavy plant stand, screw a Talavera butterfly back on the fence, reinstall a 2-foot tall plant divider. The job for my property was supposed to take three and a half hours, it took four. I think the rush at the end accounted for the poor pruning job of all the three redbuds along one side of the house. I could see on the work slip that this crew had another job in Churchill Estates, and then yet another job after that.
I have not even discussed Bixby's lack of anger management. For all these reasons outlined above, I will never use the services of Out on a Limb again, nor will I ever recommend them to another soul. read more
