Posted this review last Fall; appeared to have been mysteriously removed; so am re-posting so…read moreconsumers are aware:
What follows is what was made to endure from hiring CQC Landscaping (Romulus, MI) to landscape my home last summer: retaining brick wall, dirt, mulch, weed-blocker fabric, tree, and plants. This post is a shortened version of the what I had emailed the owner (Chris); read on and you'll understand why.
- The owner ordered for me six flowers; but what was delivered were not what I expected; they were very "stringy" looking; was told by Chris they would fully blossom in about a month; they didn't.
- Instead of using scissors or a utility knife to make clean cuts of the weed-blocker fabric, the work crew used a blow-torch. Yes, a blow-torch! That method not only wasted fabric (that I paid for), it also left burn marks (resulting in dead grass) around my lawn. Found later in the summer that the workers had double-folded and triple-folded the edges of the week-block fabric and stacked them up on top of each other, instead of having it all lay flat. That was simply laziness to me.
- The tree ordered was to be planted six feet from house; I placed an orange spike to mark the spot to dig the hole and even pointed that out to their foreman (Matt) at the start of the first day of the job. Had come outside just as the foreman was going to drop the tree in he had machine-dug, but it was three feet closer to the house; this despite all my efforts to make it easy for him; I had to tell the workers of the error and to re-center the hole. All the while the foreman did not even bother to converse or even look at me; he just stood there with his head hanging down, like he was embarrassed with getting caught screwing it up. Very unprofessional.
- I called Chris at the end of the first day to inform him of the problems that I (so far) had encountered; he just assured me that all my instructions of what I wanted done, and how, was conveyed to his foreman; that was not the case given that the owner was never there to supervise his workers. You would think the owner of the company would have at least stopped by at least once, even coming back from some other job, to check on the work done. Nope. He only showed up on the last day when most of the work was done and to collect the balance due.
- The skill level of his workers was also showcased when the foreman was yelling at the workers because they were laying down the retaining brick improperly; he literally had to instruct them, right there on the spot, on how to do it right. OMG! My next-door neighbor who witnessed the incident and was also stunned; proving that the workers Chris sent didn't fully comprehend what they were even doing. To also note, at the end of the job, they hauled away the left-over bricks that were for the retaining wall; I was never credited for that, even though I'm the one who paid for them.
It took me the rest of the summer to discover and fix the issues the CQC workers left behind which is when I emailed Chris to inform him of all that I discovered. He replied just about fifteen minutes later only to try and shame me for for the time I had taken until I to sent the email. He did not explain, offer an apology, nor even try to prove me wrong on any of the points I laid out to him, including the unprofessional work ethics of his crew. Because he knew he couldn't. When he asked on the last work day if I was happy with the outcome, I informed him I was - which was only because (a) the results "looked" decent enough, without my knowing the faulty work I'd discover later, and (b) if I had not stepped in the many times that I did to keep correcting the mistakes his crew were making, the final results would definitely have been far more unsatisfactory. When I did say to him that I had to do his job for him, he just stared at me, without responding. That spoke volumes! Based on everything stated, I cannot in good conscience recommend CQC Landscaping. There are plenty of other landscaping companies out there that I'm sure will give you your monies worth.