We need two trees removed and the weeds cut down. ASAP. Can you help?…

We chose Bill Fifita, from the first post. He had given us a pretty good bid, but called back a few minutes later and lowered it to $450. That was, at the time, the best bid we’d gotten. Since this wasn’t a job requiring exacting work, it was more cost-sensitive than others might be.

We were told the work would be done on June 11. It wasn’t. There was rain on some days, but not much communication either.

To make a long story short, after numerous contacts, a couple of trips to the lot, and repeated requests to do what was promised, some of the work was finally finished by the evening of Tuesday, June 16.

The larger of the two trees in the bid (the one toward the fence) wasn’t cut down. And it still isn’t. Instead, some small saplings and a bush on the opposite side of the lot (that our builder said could be just knocked down during excavation) were removed.

I believe that the pictures and description in the blog were clear about what needed to be done. Still, the promised job was not completed and repeated claims of misunderstanding were made. To be fair, Mr. Fifita does not seem completely fluent in English and did seem to confuse easily. But business owners should bear some responsibility for making sure they understand the requirements of the job, particularly when they are written out.

In the end, we had him trim the large tree back and more thoroughly clean the sidewalk. It will suffice, but we will look elsewhere for future work.

It’s also frustrating when we had two more bids come in from others — one for $450 and one for $400 — just after we told Mr. Fifita he could have the job. Since we had already made an agreement, we felt obligated to keep our commitment, even though it was to our disadvantage. I’m not sure he was as committed to the agreement as we were.

I’ll report back with pictures when the work is done.

Thanks to all those who responded!

Bill Fifita