Boutte Tree, Inc. — Local services in Atlanta

UPDATE: While it was a rough start, we GREATLY appreciate the owners Jessa + Tierson doing their best to sort things out and complete a touch-up. We also appreciated the work of Maquise, Gerber and Amy, that made our experience end on a positive note! Jessa apologized for issues, and said the company would do a better job of explaining terms, removal process, and take time/slow down, mark things for removal, etc which we greatly appreciated. They removed the item from our bill that was not completed, and the other item in question why sent someone out to do a touch up on in just two days. My family and I wanted so badly to love this tree company! Unfortunately we have had a BAD experience. Please view the attached correspondences + images of our experience...With such high reviews from other families and their commitment to using non-toxic materials to remove underbrush and trees, I was excited to utilize their company. We wanted an oak tree to be pruned to allow more space above our home, underbrush removed on the left side of our home to the property line, to have resulting stumps ground and to have the mulch from our job left onsite. After waiting two months for our job day (due to the pandemic they said the wait times for jobs were very long) it was finally there. We didn't expect to have to watch the crew as they completed the job, but there were issues from the start. The crew was driving off and we asked them where was our mulch? They came back to dump off our mulch. They dumped the entire day's mulch (see attached photo) in front of our home. I know other families are raving about their mulch drop off, but we only wanted our mulch from our job, as noted in our job proposal. It is such high quality, but not what we asked for. Again, we didn't expect to watch every hour of what the crew was doing. When we told their front desk, the arborist, the crew— just everyone we could, to their team, what occurred the desk said that was awful and it would get corrected. They also apologized. The arborist, however, sent us a message stating it would be $325 to remove mulch that was not designated to be dropped off at our site (see image). I talked to the Operations Manager, because at this point, days have passed and our neighbor is calling the police on us due to the mulch mound and even threatening to call the city. He states I hate to do this to you, but can you please send over a copy of your proposal where it states you only want YOUR mulch. I do that (see attachment), and still being polite ask him to please send over from the company some letter stating they will remove it in the event another office from the city comes to our home. Not only does the entire office leave for the day, not respond to our calls or email, but the arborist gives us a call. He states, yet again, we will need to charge you $325 to get the mulch. Our entire weekend was ruined, spent dealing with police calls, begging their office to deal with their crew's mistake and constantly having to send over copies of our emails, proposals, everything to prove to them we only wanted OUR mulch. The Operations Manager then states our crew should have made your home the first stop, so you only got your mulch, I said I agree but again we aren't the crew or the arborist, so why is that our fault… We are at our wits end. They are still requesting payment, and we are still scrambling with kind, honest local landscapers to deal with it. But this wasn't their issue, and their schedules are book. I see all of thee amazing reviews and wonder why our little home was treated — for a lack of better terms— like dirt. On top of all this, the stump grinding was not done. Their stump grinder came out the day after the crew worked to grind the stump, but stated there were no stumps to grind and said he would have them waive the fees for that. We said okay, we can't see any either— sounds good! Remember, we had small underbrush removed not giant trees… Their arborist, then comes out to point out a ton of small stumps and says sorry about that, he should...

The people at Boutte Tree did an awesome job on our trees. We have a large sycamore that we love, but whose leader had been struck by lightning way up high and needed removal. The problem was, they had to drop that long and heavy branch between wires in my amateur radio antenna which run throughout the tree in several directions. Second, our neighbor had a 90 foot high dead pine that needed felling, located in an inaccessible area. Too dead to climb, and only a very limited number of directions it could fall without trashing something important. Third was some smaller trees whose lower branches needed cleaning out. Kevin McDonnell was the person who came out, surveyed our situation and gave us our estimate - he did a great job and was interesting and fun to talk to - very knowledgeable and you can tell how much he loves trees and wants to know all he can about them. Then, Jacob, Gabriel, Jerry, and Charles came out and did the work. Absolutely amazing to watch. Climbed the Sycamore, dropped the leader right through a gap in my ham radio wire antennas without touching them. They dropped the pine tree right into a 10 degree or so sector where nobody's structure would get hurt, and where azaleas and other plantings would not get trashed. I have nothing but the best to say about Boutte tree based on this experience, and will not hesitate to recommend them in the future.

Second Review

About a month after my first review, above, a neighbor's tall and massive Pine Tree fell across three lots, including ours. The upper section fell into our yard, and it was a total mess. Here is a fun photo of me in the middle of the mess, before Boutte came out. My neighbor and I worked with Boutte to arrange for them to come out and remove this behemoth. They came today, made short work of the tree, with a crew who operated like surgeons with their chainsaws, skidder and boundless energy, cleaned up the yard and everything is beautiful once again. The crew who handled this job, which involved some tight maneuvering with the skidder, was Alec, Oscar and Vitelio. I cannot say enough good things about them and about Boutte Tree. Every contact I have had with them has been outstanding Jim Ewing 4.2.18

Third Review 8.27.19

I have dealt with Boutte Tree for a number of years on tree projects in my yard, large and small. I have always been highly pleased with their consummately professional work and reasonable prices.

This morning, their aerial crew came out to remove a limb in a sycamore tree. The limb hung over the house and threatened the main roof ridge. But just as important to me, its branches had captured and entangled the wires of one of my ham radio antennas, during windy storms and the natural growth process. The trick would be to take down the limb without breaking the antenna wires or trashing the house. Not a risk-free or easy job.

So the Boutte aerial crew showed up with a small European crane on tank treads called an OmmeLift. They deftly maneuvered the crane around my tight driveway, working it into a small corner where the iron hydraulic spider legs could drop and grab the driveway with only inches to spare. Jimmy got in the basket, and then Nayef and Mike rendered a virtuoso performance on the control levers to articulate Jimmy around the sky. The basket reached long and pirouetted up around the branches, way high up to the limb. Jimmy surgically cut away small pieces from the branches to untangle the wire, throwing them clear of the house. Then larger pieces, then really big pieces, all dropping safely to the ground, not even trashing a Japanese maple directly underneath. In a few minutes, the performance was over, the crane crawled back up the driveway, and they were gone, my antenna and my house still happily intact.

What a professional group of people. If you have tree projects, including those that require lots of care, creativity and talent, consider these folks. I suspect you will be as pleased as I am.

Jim...

We just completed a job with Boutte Tree and I can hardly put into words how happy I am with them. From start to finish they were incredibly good about communication, setting expectations, pricing and execution - highly recommend them. Long review below.

Job: 2 maples from front yard 1 cherry in back stump grinding of 3 trees plus 15+ additional smaller stumps

Experience: Estimates: We were quickly put onto Todd's calendar. He called 30 minutes before to tell me he was running 5-10 minutes late (he was maybe 2 minutes late). He was extremely pleasant and informative. I really trust his recommendations and that he was doing his best to take care of us versus self-serving the company. Prices were a touch more expensive (5%) than a competitor who we always got sent to voicemail and the guy was 30 minutes late with no call. Todd gave us a couple revisions to the quote within 12 hours (overnight).

Project: Wow... I thought maybe I could do this job... nope. Boutte took care of permitting and marking utilities with no effort from me. The team was on-time, called the day before to confirm and called an hour before they got there. The guys were really polite and did a great job. The team tossed the entire tree into a chipper and cleaned everything when they were done. Our neighbor had trees removed a couple days before us and their trees were chopped up and left in front of their house for days (even past our job getting done). Ours were chipped and cleared away that day (and the neighbor made a comment how she wished she used our guys). The stump grinder came 2 business days later and was fantastic. He wasn't able to get all the stumps and Boutte happily adjusted the price accordingly.

Overall: I would recommend (and have) to anyone needing great work. Maybe others can do the same job, but the complete experience and feeling that Boutte was constantly looking out for me...