Great people to work with, did an excellent job on parking lot repair. Would highly recommend.

We initially chose Rick at Carolina Mountain Grading because he answered emails and messages promptly and was very courteous during our initial meeting at the site. We told him upfront that we were new to building a home and had never done this before, so we admit we were quite naïve about the process. He appeared genuine and we felt we could trust him. He gave us a quote, which left out a lot of details. I contacted him to get more information, such as what was covered in broad categories such as cutting in a driveway. Over the next few weeks, several things came up that he charged us extra for supplies such as gravel, although he clearly stated in an email that gravel was already included in the price. Each week, more charges were added without any forewarning. They would just show up on the invoice. He was not able to provide any receipts to show the number of trips to the dump, yet he claimed it took 21 trips to the dump to clear a 1/3 acre lot! When I tried to discuss this, he simply would not discuss it. As we were in the middle of the process of getting the lot cleared, we did not want to fire him and hire someone else, so we tried to continue to work with him. Long story made short - his final bill came to over 3 times the original estimate! Considering the tremendous increase in the final bill, it took a week or so to transfer funds from various accounts to get him paid. I explained this to him and he seemed Ok with this, but he continued to send us electronic invoices every single day stating that the account was overdue even though we were making payments to him every couple of days. Clearly, we were trying to get him paid! So, he finished the tasks and we are hoping to move ahead with the building of our house. Final straw, the drilling company and home construction project manager called me today to explain that the silt fence was not installed properly and someone has to redo that. It was simply staked in the ground. I called Rick to discuss this with him. He said he never heard that a silt fence needs to be inserted into a trench in the ground and backfilled to work properly. He flat-out refused to do anything about it, even though we paid him to install a silt fence. He got very angry with me and told me the conversation was over and hung up on me! He was shouting so loud that my husband in the other room could hear his voice over the phone. This guy comes off as being very polite, but honestly - don't trust him unless you have everything down to the minute detail related to costs. We paid him an exorbitant amount of money to clear a 1/3 acre lot and he can't even fix a silt fence? He certainly does not stand behind his work. read more