In response to Vikas' review of my work, I would like to say that as always, a great deal of effort was put into achieving a satisfactory result, however, there are some customers which regardless of the quality of work or the fairness of the price, can never be made happy. In this case, we provided several additional services and materials toward this end and at no charge to the customer. It appears that Vikas primary concern was to extract as much time and material from us as possible at the cheapest possible price and then to make a very public complaint about the result without addressing these concerns with me directly.\r
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During our initial meeting we reviewed Vikas' property and discussed his expectations. The property had been improperly graded by a previous contractor who had buried the existing sprinkler system and created depressions in the yard that caused water to pool. We agreed on services and types of material to be used. I gave him a start date for all hardscapes of 6 weeks from the date of agreement. Due to the time of the year (fall of 2011), we immediately got on site to deal with the irrigation problem and to try to get grass going. \r
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In terms of the plant material selected for this project, I recommended that Vikas go in person to Weston Nurseries to select his plants. I believe he chose all plant material on line without actually seeing what was in stock as well as the condition of the plants, both of which are important factors at the end of the season in the fall when this was done. He chose twice as many plants as proposed and agreed. Most of the plant material were perennials that lose their leaves and flowers at the end of the season.\r
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I recommended that Vikas meet at a local paver supplier to pick out brick material and color. He chose a more expensive paver than we proposed and refused to pay for the upgrade. Usually there is a 10 to 15 percent waste per paver area depending on how curvy the project is. Normally I absorb some of the cost of the additional square footage needed to cover this “waste” material, but in this case due to the homeowner's refusal to pay the difference for the more expense material that was not part of our agreement, I ordered exactly the specified square footage of brick and made the patio work with the ordered quantity. Vikas expected to get a free upgrade on the hardscaping material, he expected me to install more plant material than was specified in his estimate and all of this for 12% off with one of my coupons.\r
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In my effort to make this customer happy, I lost a fair amount of time and money. I did however deliver exactly what we agreed upon, which is probably more than many others would have done. Despite this, I would have welcomed the opportunity to have a civilized discussion with Vikas about his concerns prior to his lodging this personally spiteful review. Each of my customers is tremendously important to me as a small, local business owner who depends on word-of-mouth recommendations. I would like to personally assure any potential customer that my desire for a satisfactory final product is of utmost concern.
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