Flowers Maybe/Landscaping WATCH OUT!

Posted by ce_younger on 3/15/2008

They had done fresh flowers for me for several years and done a nice (but expensive) job. When I needed landscaping I called. First red flag is that he uses a subcontractor. I was promised "satisfaction guaranteed" but got nothing close. I was talked into doubling my budget and got nothing like we discussed. He promised superior quality bedding material and, by his own admission, used cheaper material that has washed away in many places. The wash outs show that they didn't bother loosening the root balls on the plants. Instead of a French drain they put up gutters that are too small and water collects in the middle, no where near a downspout. A number of the plants died within a couple of months and it took literally months of e-mails and calls to get them to come replace them. Now the replacements have died too. The subcontractor did tell me that he used some plants left over from other jobs...after the fact. That at least explained why what we got was not what we discussed. Satisfaction guaranteed...don't believe it. Like the title says...flowers, maybe...landscaping, watch out!!

Response from Rickey Heroman Florist-

Posted on 10/13/2008

First of all, We do not use a 'sub-contractor' We did get a call from this customer and gave him a fair quote which was more than his budget. He tried to get us to do everything he wanted but would not raise his budget to the quote, he was not talked into anything, he simply would not lower his expectations or increase his budget. We told him up front his expectations for the amount he wanted to spend were unreasonable. He said he was getting gutters put on his house by someone else but when he got their price he was not happy with what they wanted to charge and insisted we do it for less and use smaller gutters. Our mistake was trying to help him out and save him money. All along the way we told him he was trying to do to much for his budget at one time and needed to do his project in phases, he insisted he did not want to wait but could not increase his budget. We told him up front we had to lower the specs on plant sizes, etc. for his budget. We have replaced plants twice at our expense because the elevation on his home is not right, something we also tried to explain in the beginning. I have learned from this experience not to try to help when people want more than they can pay for at the time, from now on we either offer to do a protion of the project and phase in the rest over time or refuse to take the work. This is the problem you get into when you try and help someone out that cannot afford what they want to achieve. We told him to get someone else to do the project but he kept calling us back, I assume because the other prices were higher that ours?