Affordable Tree Care — Local services in Murray

As somebody noted in another review, all they care is money. Well, most business do and that's fine but Affordable Tree took it to another level.Don’t waste your time with them. They don’t respect their customers or potential customers nor their time. Here is our poor experience with them. One of Affordable Trees owners (Tom Hoffmann) gave us a quote, and said “call us back when you decide.” When I called them back about a week later, he responded “I’ll get back to you with scheduling.” After not hearing for three days, I’ve followed up myself. This time another owner (Scott Johnson) picked up the phone and explained that Tom was out on his personal leave, and that he didn’t know anything about scheduling our work. He then asked “how much were the services quoted?” After hearing “$140,” he said that he will get back to me. He called me back and said “your requested tree services are very cheap, we don’t want to waste time and send the team and workers to your area unless we’re nearby.” Note that we live in Midvale – right in the center of the city and not somewhere far as Eagle Mountain. The company’s address is in neighboring Murray. That is when I should have told them “good-bye,” but I’ve asked when they will be in the area, and Scott said “in a week.” I’ve told him that it was fine and we can wait, but asked to call me back couple days in advance and let me know the day, and check if it worked for us. Well, after waiting a week, I’ve called again. This time Tom answered and said that he scheduled us for this Wednesday (without calling us and confirming as I’ve agreed with Scott). That was the only day this week when we couldn’t do it. I’ve asked Tom what time of the day they will be coming and explained that we won’t be able to do it after 1pm and asked to reschedule if they will not be able to come before 1pm. Tom responded that he had no idea when they will be at our place and finally told me “how about your forget about us, go find someone else, your services requested were so cheap anyway for us.” How rude! So why waste my time, give me quote, keep telling me that they will schedule and get the job done and then tell me that services were cheap and they weren’t interested anymore. Why would a company that is advertising themselves as “we provide all tree services” from “whether you need your trees or bushes trimmed or clean up from storm damage, we're here to help,” tell me three weeks later that it was a cheap job for them. And why name the company as affordable and they say “your tree services needed were too cheap.” That is a misrepresentation of services advertised. For those who are interested to know what tree services we needed: trim one large tree, remove large (very large) branches from another tree and remove couple bushes. The job was quoted at $140 (each item was priced individually). We also needed to remove a large tree too but decided to postpone till spring, and I have an idea that they didn’t want to come because we decided to do the tree next year. Tom actually asked what items in the quote we wanted to do… So I am pretty sure that it was the reason. The branches that needed to be cut were growing over a neighbors’ property, and neighbors were interested in the tree company we will be using, since they needed tree services too. Well, tonight I’m going to tell our neighbors that our needed tree services were “too cheap,” and that we will be looking for another vendor. So they lost more business there. I understand that businesses are there to make money, but it’s low to treat customers by asking first thing “how much was the quote” and also saying “your services were so cheap." So I don't recommend this business to anyone....

This will be a mixed review.

I had Affordable Tree Care come out earlier in spring to do injections to keep my maple healthy. Cody was very polite when he showed up and showed a genuine care for my tree.

Fast forward to June/July. I asked them for a quote through their website, I never received a call or email scheduling a quote. I work from home, so am almost always available. Well, one day, going to get the mail, I find the quote paper stuffed inside of my mailbox, no one ever knocked on my door or called me.

Their quote to remove tree shooters was reasonable, but, they wanted hundreds of dollars to provide what I asked them for, a trim of my Maple (a tree that is less than 30 ft high, I did NOT ask for any thinning etc, just trimming it back from the house and from my neighbor's property).

Well, immediately the same day, I get a call from their office stating that I hadn't paid for the tree injections.. Funny that, I have the receipt from my bank. To which, I told him I paid already, and he said he'd call me back.. So, I called the owner again and asked him what was going on, since he is the one who took payment (EARLIER than when we had scheduled because I called him to do so), and he shrugged it off, saying that he 'trusts' me, and that they don't have the technology yet to keep track of payments.

It's 2018, use quickbooks, it's easy and affordable to keep track rather than harassing potential customers months after they have already paid you. After the phone call, I texted him a screenshot of the payment on my end and received no response.

After cooling off a little bit from the frustration, I messaged them over the weekend to see about getting them to do the tree shooter portion of the quote and not the maple, since I'd need to save up for that part. However, received no response.

So, I called their office this morning, no response, left a message, nothing.. I finally called Cody, left a message and he called me back. However, when I asked if they'd honor the price of the tree shooters without the maple on the quote, he said he'd have to talk to the other owner and would call me back in 5 minutes.

That was 5 hours ago. If you don't want to do the work, please, just let people know. This back and forth is hard on the customer and only shows that the customer is not, in fact important. Yet, you're all too quick to try to collect a payment that was...

UPDATE: In the end, they did make it right by reducing my bill to match what I could have paid another company to come drill to the stump. I'm leaving the original review because it should stand as a warning and we did need to go through the whole ordeal (including fixing our deck) - I would say they came through with their customer service though

READ YOUR WRITTEN QUOTE CLOSELY!!!

I guess I'll give them a star because they actually removed my tree. Let me be clear, the reason I chose them is because, when they were here to look at the tree and give us a quote, their verbal quote included grinding the stump. We had other quotes that were far less, and they didn't include the stump, so their quote made sense.

When we got the written quote, I made sure the final amount is what we agreed on, accepted it and sent a deposit. We had to wait weeks for them to get here (others would have been here the same week we got the quotes).

When the day finally came, we asked about the stump and we were told it would be a different team that came and did it. Ok, sure. Only later, after they finished the tree, did someone tell us that we didn't sign up to have the stump done. I looked at the written quote and it says take down tree TO stump. TO. Those two little letters made all the difference in the world and now we have a huge stump left over.

I could have paid $500 less with a different company that would have come out sooner to have it taken down TO the stump. I feel like this was a total bait and switch. PLUS, they damaged our deck! We noticed it before they even left and asked them about it, of course they wanted to take NO blame for it, but someone did come out later and offer us $50 off. Golly, thanks. In the end, the final bill was $200 less than the quote - not sure if this was because we expressed we weren't happy with the $50 off or what, but it still isn't as cheap as the other guy would have been - and we wouldn't have damage we...