John JMiller Insurance and Financial Services

The customer built a new home late last year, which required finished grading to be done early this spring by their excavator We were ready to do their landscaping late March / early April, however, they were not ready for us because their excavator had not been there yet They were to notify us when the excavator was going to be there They notified us on May 13, via email that their excavator would be there next week - no day or time was given The next we heard from them was a phone message on May 26, that their excavator would be there on Tuesday June 2, and we could come up and meet with him It is over an hour drive for our company one way to their place We informed them that the date the excavator was going to be there would not work with us due to our schedule already being booked solidly thru June 17th at that point (since April-June are our busiest months of the season and our days are generally booked solidly from 6am-9pm seven days a week) and we would not be able to break away that long from the current job we were on to meet with the excavator that day We mentioned, however, we could break away on Thursday June 4, to meet briefly with him as we were scheduled to be at a job site near their area that morning anyway They said that would not work for the excavator and he would just go ahead and excavate without meetingwith us We then received an email from the customer late on Tuesday June 2, telling us that the excavation would be completed tomorrow (Wednesday) and asked if we were still planning on coming up there Thursday am (to do their job) We had never stated that we were going to START their job that Thursday, only that we would have been able to meet with the excavator that day rather than Tuesday the 2nd.We are generally booked up several months in advance and the customer expected us to drop all of the other customers who were booked since they were not ready when they were supposed to be They wanted us to drop everyone else on a days notice to do their job now because they were ready now We were able to do some adjustments with our construction schedule and were planning on starting their job on June 22nd / 23rd unless the rain delayed usThe customer relayed some disappointment, thinking they should have been higher up on "the docket" (as they worded it) since they pre-paid They had been scheduled for earlier in spring and they were not ready, which is no fault of ours Pre-paying for a job in advance does not mean that you can push other scheduled jobs aside when you are finally ready to have your job done What the pre-pay promo offered was a huge discount on the project from the overall price It did not provide any special precedence over other jobs that had been booked before them and due to the fact that the site was not ready when we were available to install their job, we had to fit them in the schedule where we could We did a site inspection on Friday, June 12, and were appalled at what the excavator had done Their excavator had changed the entire scope of the proposed project area which we had bid, in fact, it was altered so much that the job site required a whole redesign because of how unsafe the job site had become after the excavation First there was the issue oftheir excavator altering a side path (that did not need to be altered) He excavated away the support side wall that was holding the path up from a shear drop off down to a lake With this side wall missing there was no support for the pathway, it might hold light duty equipment like a mower or possibly a gator, but would not support the weight of a heavy tractor or skid steer, especially if it was hauling product It was only a matter of a few times driving up and down on this unsupported pathway before it gave out, becoming extremely unsafe and someone would get severely hurt rolling down the steep embankment Secondly their excavator, for some reason or another (which we cannot figure out), created an incredibly steep slope immediately in front of the proposed new patio area severely close to where there were existing sonotubes for their pre-existing raised wooden deck posts With this steep slope a patio could not be installed underneath this raised wooden deck because there would be no support on the slope side without putting in an extensive block retaining wall or concrete wall there to hold up and support soil and base for the patio and existing sonotube area Previously there had been a gentle slope of settled soil which did not need to be disturbed This section on the slope side of the patio did not need to be excavated at all Again, we are not sure why this was done Our recommendation for this newly excavated site was to let the soil settle again over summer and do the project next spring because whatever was put in place there now, whether a wall, patio etc the soil was going to settle and cause shifting / settling issues If that happens then the support for the new patio and existing wood deck sonotubes would be in jeopardy The customer was supposed to get back to us with what they wanted to do They did not specify what they wanted to do, whether the excavator would fix it, they would let it settle and them do a wall etcWe had informed them that we could do their front pathway yet since that area was not disturbed Again, there was no indication on what they wanted to do They requested via email August 14, that they wanted a refund, which we stated that we would refund and gave them the timeframe of when to expect their refund Our refund policy for cancelled projects has remained constant and unchanged since the year we began landscape construction projectsThis policy is generally standard throughout the landscape construction industry