7/1/25-We met with Jaime, the owner of Ultra Landscaping regarding a front & back yard cleanup to include: No use of RoundUp or other chemicals, no string trimmer use to remove weeds. Hand pulling of all existing weeds, except the weeds in the decomposed granite where they could be removed with a hula hoe. Removal of all existing bark. Cleanup of all plants.
He was very assured in his estimated cost of the project stating that our project would take 3 people 3-4 days for completion. He made us aware of the industry hourly rate for a project such as ours, and initially quoted a total cost of $5000, which we negotiated down to $4500. On his written estimate it states "remove all the weeds" which doesn't exclude the roots!
7/7/25 at 7:30, he and his crew of 3 arrived and worked until 2:30. Initially, his crew started by using a shovel to remove the weeds and we reminded Jaime and his crew that weeds were to be hand pulled as agreed. They started hand pulling, but later switched again to a shovel, which resulted in at least 20 emitters from our drip irrigation being broken off! We explained to him and his crew that Bermuda grass needs to be dug up with a snake in order to get at the roots. No one seemed to care about getting the roots...for $4500 they should have gotten the roots!
7/8/25 they arrived at 7:50 and were "done" by 11:30. Jaime wanted us to walk through the project and immediately we saw some weeds not touched and some bark was still there, and some plants weren't cleaned up! We told him to walk the job as the owner of Ultra Landscaping and call us once everything was completed as agreed. Once again, we had to show him where it was not done. Jaime remarked that his "vision for our project was not the same as ours!" We clearly communicated our "vision" and he set a price for the number of hours required to achieve "our vision" and he and his crew failed miserably!
Jaime saw the extensive damage that his crew did to our irrigation, which he did offer to repair, but after all of the back and forth, we no longer trusted his work!
In summary, we have to repair the damage that Ultra Landscaping did to our irrigation, remove the weeds that were visible a week after their shoddy work, remove bark that they were paid to do, and clean up and trim plants that they were paid to do.
In conclusion, we feel that Jaime didn't keep his word, he took short cuts to get the job done faster, he severely overestimated the cost of the job to justify the $4500 that he quoted, and took advantage of us because we are retired senior citizens! read more
