Benton & Associates Land Surveying and Mapping, PA

The surveyors lefts panny nails in my yard and put a surveyors tape on a iron pipe that was very sharp, bent and sticking out of the ground.The penny nails were stuck into grass level with the ground and all over the yard. If left there my lawn mower could easily make them into projectiles. I don't know for sure I got them all. The stake was bent and was extremely sharp. They put a tape on it as a property stake. It was loose and sticking out of the ground by about 6". I don't know who put it there, there used to be a fence there. If my grandson had fell on it or I had hit it with the mower it would have been a disaster. I called another surveyor and he said they would have removed it and placed a stake i.e. a rebar below ground level in its place. The also left little flags all over my yard and the next doors yard too. The stake they used to mark my property line had been placed there by someone after I moved into the house and after I removed the fence but it did not have a surveys marking tape on it. Then the marked another stake that was not there when they arrived. It was a copper stake put beside the survey concrete monument that is used per the deed to mark the corner of my property. The refused to start at that marker which is clearly the correct marker, I had this verified by another surveyor and the cooper marker they placed into the ground was also loose and sticking above ground level too. The they said a lot a negative remarks about the original surveyor when I bought the house over 15 years ago. They said all he does is eyeball the lines and goes back to his office and draws a map. This surveyor gave me a stamped survey which was used at closing. Desired SettlementI told him based on the work they did I did not want the survey and I did not want to pay for it, he said he was going to put a lean on my house, I said ok but I still did not want his survey and he never gave me a survey anyway and he never has even sent me a bill. I am waiting any day now for a sheriff deputy to show up and give me a notice for a lean. I don't want the survey and I don't want to pay for it either.Business Response Thank you for the opportunity to respond to this complaint. On April 30, 2015 the client contacted our office and requested a survey of his property. On May 07, 2015 our firm began the field work and returned May 11, 2015 to complete the field location portion of the survey. The penny nails referred to by the client are actually 6 inch long landscape timber nails that are driven flush with the top of the ground by a hammer and are used as stable working points from which to locate the various property corners and improvements on the property when it is not possible to occupy the actual property corner itself. Use of these nails is common practice in the profession and can be found on most survey supply websites. It would take quite an effort to remove the nail from the ground and in several cases we have been able to recover these nails years later when returning to a job site. It would be next to impossible for a lawn mower to pull one of these nails out of the ground and cause it to become a projectile. The sharp iron pipe referred to by the client was an existing iron pipe used to mark the location of a property corner. We did tie a piece of surveyor flagging on it as is common practice and left it in the same condition we found it. The General Statute governing the practice of land surveying forbids the removal of existing property corners. All the "stakes" the client refers to were either existing iron rods or existing iron pipes recovered during the course of the survey. Our firm did not set any new "iron stakes" during the course of this survey. The "copper stake" referred to beside the survey concrete monument was existing, therefore, both the concrete monument and "copper stake" was located and shown on the survey plat as required by the standards of practice for land surveying in NC. Once the final plat was completed we contacted the client to come in and review the results of the survey. It was at this point the client produced a survey plat from another survey firm performed in 2006. The client noticed there was a difference of approximately 0.4 feet in the offset distance from the property line to the house corner as shown on our plat and as shown on the 2006 survey plat and wanted to know why. I told the client that, based upon personal knowledge, the way the original surveyor located the house on the property was not as accurate as the method used today by our firm and that this could account for the difference. I can only assume this is what the client considered "a lot of negative remarks about the original surveyor". After talking to the client for approximately 45 minutes, it became clear that this was about the location of the eastern property line and where the client wanted to place a fence. The results of our survey did not support where the client had begun to place his fence posts. The client left the office without paying for or receiving a copy of the survey. Approximately three or four days later I phoned the client to inquire about the status of his survey and he informed me he did not want it and was not going to pay for it. I told him I could put a lean against his property for lack of payment for professional services and his response was "do what you have to do". After talking to my field crew [redacted] who was one of two crew members that did the field work, I learned the client drove a truck with a disabled veteran license plate. Because of this I decided to drop the issue and take the loss.As far as Benton & Associates Land Surveying and Mapping, P.A. is concerned, this is not an issue and the client does not owe us for the surveying services preformed on his property.