Bch Landscaping Design & Constructions

My story started off on the right-foot. Initial meeting was very professional and curtious. Roman (one of two BCH's primaries) gloated over his presentation which included an award of Excellence from his trade association Landscape of Onario which by defaul, in my POV, puts BCH at the top of the landscaper's market. I was very impressed to say the least. The meeting, and we clicked. There, I thought, is a man with Passion for his work and no doubt a true professional. I could't wait for him to start and break the ground for the project. That evening I went as far as trying to get my neighbour to also use his service, as I knew he was looking for something to be done in his back yard. We are located in a new (3 year old) development so all the necessities such as fencing and landscaping need to be done. Work commenced by the end of May of 2014. My wife was especially impessed with the progress during the process; I received constant feedback from her as she is a stay-at-home mother (sorry, having a hard time finding a better phrase, no offence to readers who might preferr different terminology; non-the-less, it takes a lot of skill and patience -- Love You Honey) as we have 3 small childern. Her feedback was always positive with the exception of the garden part of the equation. Let me elaborate. Mrs Clara is BCH's secondary and Roman's spouse. She is responsible for garden design and the like. The only problem is, she kept on pushing her style onto my wife who does not like certain species, for example lilacs. And guess what, Mrs Clara shows up with a bunch of lilacs and intends to plant them in our garden after my wife specificaly mentioned that lilacs are simply out of the question. And me, well; whatever my sweetie wants. I guess lilacs were on special at that time. LOL. After all said and done, I've spent $3800 for our flowerbed, which is premium for the job that was carried out, but I had no problem with that, since hey; sometimes it's better spend a little more and be done with it! Besides, I was guaranteed 12 month warranty on all plants and trees. Oh boy, was I wrong! We will get to that in a minute. Within a couple of weeks, things begun to die. My initial reaction was to get my professional's advice on how to tackle the issue. We had a problem with excess water on our part of the property due to grading and soil type, which in-effect created unfavourable conditions for growth. (Which I believe BCH should have been awareof, as they have excavated the area to prepare for deck, patio and garden). I have followed BCH's advice of instaling a weeping tile, at which point I preferred it to be done by BCH's chosen contractor as to make sure it's done to my professional's (BCH's) specifications. I've spent an additional $800 for the job, regretfully to no effect; the soil still held a lot of water. An additional extension of the weeping tile did not make any sense for me, as the company installing the item could not guarantee any better results with further modification to the exising weeping tile in place. I simply did not see a benefit of spending an additional $1,200 for the modification if the needed outcome could not be guranteed. As that did not result in a fix, BCH's reponse was to put the onus on me, and try to convince me that I over-waterd the area. Hmm, I'm no expert but an orifice of approximately 0.020” on each sprinkler head times 3 heads at City's water pressure of about 45 PSI on my water main (remembered because my sprinkler “guy” checked the pressure before installing the system on my property), watering at 3 day intervals for 5 minutes per interval could not, in my opinion (and others), add so much water to the soil (which by-the-way is malched). As it all turns-out, with BCH, once a client has paid for the job completed and encounters any problems that might be costly or simply inconvinient for BCH, all of a sudden the client becomes the enemy and is treated with disrepect, frankly speaking; the world is not all sunshine 24/7, so I don't mind, but what I do mind is the cavalier treatment that follows. I guess, it is your turn to become the expert. Now prepare to spend some more money. Pay for irrigation experties (such as in my case, and may not apply to you), gardening experts, soil scientist to pull samples (can you believe it, there is such a job) and finally, just to make sure you have an "air-tight" case get yourself and engineer that deals with property grading and drainage to ensure that the grading and conditions present are not out-of-the-ordinary. Now you become the expert and frankly its discusting what you find: Not the right top-soil, not enough of top-soil, wrong planting method for the type of conditions, and bad location of certain species. WOW, very intensive, I most cerainly had no interest in diving this deep. At the end, I have invested a lot of my time, effort and money to compile my evidence. Why, you may ask, for a $3,800 flowerbed job? (Total job; flowerbed, deck and patio cost me $19,600) Well, lets say that I have a lot of capacity to take on BS but my wife most certainly doesn't! The heated conversations that took place after the fact between my wife and Mrs Clara were not pleasant and my wife felt ripped-off, yet again! Step in me. I held no reserve and went all-out after our final meeting in the fall of 2014. What truly surpised me was Roman's behavior after the fact. Who would have thought?! A Professional behaving in such a childish manner, as if we were back on the school ground and I'm dealing with a Bully. Their final words of wisdom as they left our property were "We Will Never Step Foot on this Propery Ever Again", they've Exclaimed. And "We're putting you on the Black List of Clients" Wow, I was in total disbelief. A "Black List"! This is something New and surely might be of interest to the industry segment in which I work in. With evidence on-hand I started e-mailing BCH; but to no surprise, no response. First letter dated Jan 03, 2015 stated my problem and mentioned my promissed "warranty". I was after-all not very surprised that there was no responce; as the duel must have been under the impression that I am very angry, emotional and certainly bluffing. What?! Compiled evidence! They surely loughed. Follow letter #2, dated Jan 23, 2015 Now I'm more firm, and just to make sure that I am not wrong in thinking that they've received the initial letter, I also state that I will register-mail both the initial and current letter. Which of course I did. BCH's retalliation time followed; unpleasent phone calls and finaly a formal response "Thank you for inquiry. BCH Landscaping Ltd. is closed for the winter season. We resume operations on Wenesday, April 1, 2015." Signed Veronica (Seasonal Administrative Assistant). Wow, that's a very convinient way to respond, considering my warranty lapses end of May 2015, and I will have no time left to do anything in this regard. Follow my 3rd and final letter dated Jan 31, 2015 giving BCH final notice to comply to my Warranty and knowing that BCH has no interest in resolving this Minor Issue and having had the unpleasant phone calls, I have demanded that any further communication between us will strictly be in Written form via eMail, Canada Post, FedEx, Purolator, or the like and I also explicitly stated that there will be No Verbal conversations whatsoever. Let us not leave any room for misunderstanding of any kind! Today is Mar 9th of 2015 and I still haven't heard from BCH in any shape or form. I've decided to write this review first. If that does not help, next I'm filing a complaint with the BBB (Better Business Bureau) and if I need to go as far as the Small Claims Court, I will. I have collected all the evidence that one needs to have a strong case, I don't doubt that I will win but I will also claim damages for both my wasted (which is valuable to me atleast) and menatl anguish and unnecessary duress put on my wife. In conclusion, Clara's gardening was and is a disaster (ie its most/ all dead), the deck was built by an outside contractor and is of very good quality (Cudos), Roman's patio is also of very good quality but leaves little room for improvement (eg We've got an oval shape interlock boarder and in the design Roman decided to cut "slivers" out of the interlock and weadge between the rectangular pieces to accomadate the oval shape. He sould have cut along the length of the interlock stone at an angle-cutting out tapers-on both sides to make an oval shape so that we would have gotten a seemless design without future problems with these "slivers" that will crumble in time due to their shape.) Never intended to nit-pick! But what the heck, if I'm in, then lets be Very Specific and Professional, after all I had to become very knowledgeable in the topic. Now, I'm just very curious what BCH has to say about all this. Stay tooned. From one Dissatisfied Customer