We hired Goettl's Tree Service to remove trees and grind stumps on our property, Tim is very…read moreunprofessional and, in my opinion, runs a dishonest business. He said he cuts trees year around, gave us an estimate and said if we paid him in cash, he would "take care of the taxes for us". We paid him 1/2 down and expected to pay the remainder upon completion of the job which is customary. He told us he likes to prepare his customers for the worst and explained that a portion of our landscaping timbers may get "a little banged up" and we may end up with "a couple of ruts" in our yard due to wet weather; we told him we were OK with that because we were having a new septic system installed in the spring in that portion of the yard. A few days after the job was started, Tim requested the remainder of the payment, said he needed to rent equipment or he would not be able to complete the job, like a fool, I gave it to him, that's when the problems started. During the past 6 weeks, since he started the job, we have had multiple no shows with so many excuses he cannot keep his story straight, when he does show up, he works for an hour or two and then leaves. When questioned about the timeline, he tells us our property is top priority. He has destroyed a large portion of our yard on two sides of our house to the point our septic contractor is concerned the ground is compacted to the point of compromising the new mound location, and he completely tore down a retaining wall with his equipment. He started cutting branches off of our neighbor's tree and If I wouldn't have been home to intervene, he would have also caused severe damage my neighbor's yard. There were many times during our conversations where he would randomly say "I'm not drunk" or something similar and on two separate occasions called me at night, being very loud and aggressive, yelling at me once because the day before, the septic contractor had asked that he drive his tractor around the right side of a tree instead of the left to avoid any more damage to the mound site (he was present the day before and was fine with the request), and the other time to yell at me about the weather and to let me know we were not his only customer. I saw this man urinating on our driveway twice. I also watched him attempt to back his trailer into my driveway after dark, unable to keep it straight and backed it up onto the yard and ran over a pile of branches, unhooked the trailer, got in his truck, got back out, hooked the trailer up and left with it. On three other occasions, he would bring equipment in the morning unhook it, and the hook it back up and leave without doing any work.
After more than 30 days of his bizarre and at times frightening behavior I asked that he complete the job within one week or return a portion of our payment so we could hire someone else to do it, and let him know that I was going to write an honest review of our experience with his company in an effort to give him the opportunity to redeem himself, he agreed to finish the job by my deadline. He showed up and worked for a couple hours that week but did not complete the job. He then begged me not to follow through reviewing his business and filing complaints and tried to bribe me with $100, when I refused is offer, he proceeded to accuse me of physically threatening the safety of his crew. It is now 8 weeks since the start of the job and he finally came back to finish the haul away but has not completed the clean up that was included in the payment.
