I want to start by saying that I do not normally write reviews. However, our experience with Dean's was so bad, that I felt compelled to do so. I would also like to point out that won $5,000 in free landscaping from them from the home and garden show in Denver and that is the only reason we went with them at all. The $5k is really where it started. Sounds like a great deal and that it was all easy street from there, right? Wrong. So we met with their landscape designer (Myles) and the first meeting went really well. We told him what we were looking for. Pretty simple. We wanted a quote for a stamped concrete patio, a lawn with a sprinkler system, edging and river rock along the fence, and a cedar fence with a run of 36'. He took notes and later scheduled a follow up meeting where he would show us a design mock-up and a quote. We got the quote and it was a bit more than we expected: $13,000. So we trimmed it down by about $7000. That's when things started to go a little downhill. E-mails were responded to more slowly. We finally met to pick out the colors for our patio and scheduled an install date. Just before the date, we changed our minds regarding the patio. We decided that we wanted regular concrete vs stamped, since the cost was the same for a larger patio. After some emails back and forth, they agreed to make the change without charging us a cancellation fee since weather had already made them cancel the original order anyway. So the installation day comes and the team gets to work on everything. They couldn't get their rototiller working, so they just raked some amendment on top of the clay. The sod was left with gaps, weeds and unadjusted sprinkler heads until I was able to get them to adjust them.
The concrete should have been postponed since it was so unseasonably hot out, but they delivered and got to work anyway. At first, it looked OK going in, but after they were done and I watched it dry, my satisfaction continued to drop. It was uneven in color, in texture and in application. The stairs had lips at the kick. There were dents, and it wasn't all broomed the same. The color was different in spots because they had to keep watering parts of it to work. Since it??s not perfectly flat and has low spots, water pools on it near the steps. Emails were responded to in a few days when I would receive a very brief email (this was how it was from the moment the patio was laid. To get a timely response, I would have to have the main office track him down and call me). They came out to look at it and determined that they could rip it out or just knock $300 off of the bill. We agreed to $500, since after seeing how they deal with concrete, there was no chance that I was going to take a gamble that it would turn out worse. This is what happens when you have landscaping people (and not concrete professionals) install concrete. To say we are unhappy with the patio would be an understatement. This ended in May. We have since agree upon a final price, but have not yet received the final breakdown of the bill, despite having already paid. Also, because of the crazy rain we received, the soil underneath the patio sunk because it wasn't properly compacted, so I spent a few hours over the weekend packing it with concrete to fill in the void (which was 3+ inches in spots).
I cannot in good conscience recommend them to anyone. We received decent service in the beginning and were excited, but we feel like after they realized they weren't going to make any money off of us (because they were so expensive on every aspect of the project) that they just didn't care, and we got their backup crew for the installation and that's why we've had the issues we have had. As it is, I'm very unhappy with the service and quality of installation. If I had to pay full price (throwing the $5000 out the window), I would be absolutely livid.
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