Complaint Review: Walt's Affordable Tree Care

Hired Walts Afordable Tree Care to remove mulch, replace with landscape cloth and river rock, remove and trim trees, change two pine trees.  He showed up awith correct equipment, 2 sons and a helper.  I should have stopped when his estimate did not sow an address but we were conned.  The work was done while we were at work.. His promise was that if we did not like he did, he wold make it right at his expense. 

The mulch was removed and he did not bring enogh rock to replace it so he removed several hundred of our interlockig border stones and did not tell us. When he shortened the soten bed border, he simply laid the stones on the surface instead of digging them into the doil with 1" above ground.  He butchered some of the trees, when he replaced 2 opine trees in my front uard, he stated that the replacements wold be 6' tall.  The actual replacements were less than 4' tall and looked like he dug them up along the road. 

He promised that they would grow straight because the first year, the shroter tree would withstand wind.  ALong the way, he disapeared for days at a time, his phone was either disconnected or when operationg, the voice mail was full.  Every time he called back he claimd ot have been in the hospital.  The premium landscape coloth that I paid for was junk and he shorted the beds in the middle and along ht eends so weeds have ggon up and the cloth was not staked down and has shifted.  He never finished the job although he was paid. 

He asked for a partial check to buy the stone, and it seemed a reasonable request but he had me make the first check outto his name, Walter Price (if thatis a correct name) because it would be easier for him to cash it to buy materials.  At the end of the job, I insisted that he give me the final bill on a letterhead.  He wrote his address on it by hand.  A flag shold have gone up.  The job was never finished and althoug he was not rude to me, he ignored the voice mails that I made repeatedly. 

I sent him (and the IRS) a 1099 form to the address on his "letterhead" and it was retuend by the US  Postal Service as a vacant lot.  I have his cell phone number and the address on htis site form another victim.  I will be making an appointment with the IRS to report him as a potential tax dodger.  I have resigned myself to having to hire a legitimate landscape firm, it owuld be fruitless to pursue thiscrook, but if I can get the IRS to investigate him and they find that my checks were not reported as income, he will be landscaping the garden of a fedral penetentiary   Please excuse any typos..