We hired Earthscapes to take over my property maintenance based on a recommendation from someone who was described by Jim Waters of Earthscapes as one of his best clients and one of his most lucrative accounts. There were some glaring warning signs that we overlooked during the initial process of hiring Earthscapes including Jim's serious attitude problem, which was my biggest issue with him and ultimately the main reason we terminated our relationship with Earthscapes.
* We had a minor drainage problem that Earthscapes made worse due to their inadequate solution and poor quality of work. Jim Waters suggested a solution to keep rain water flowing away from my driveway to prevent a handful of mulch from washing on to the driveway in heavy rain, but he did not do the job correctly and it looks awful.
* We also had Earthscapes replace all of the plantings in the front of our house and replace with new plantings as some of the plantings had become mature and it looked a little overgrown in some places. We were not happy with the quality of the plantings overall and his crew did an extremely sloppy job and left a mess when they were done. I had to go out there with a hose and broom to clean off my walkways etc when they were done. I complained to Jim that we were not happy with the quality of his work and the plants but he did not want to hear it.
* Overall, our property looked awful under the care of Earthscapes. I asked Jim several times to have someone trim my hedges etc in my backyard as it was clear that he wasn't coming around to check on my property to see what needed to be done. The work overall when performed was sloppy and inadequate. The Earthscapes Landscaping crew has completely ripped up my yard with their mowing machines because they were using machines that were too big for wet ground (not to mention that my property has some sloping areas). Instead of spending an extra 15 minutes at my house making turns at a slower speed etc, the Earthscapes crew determined it would be better to rip up my yard and make my backyard look like a motocross track, which is exactly what it looked like in some spots.
* Jim Waters made comments to the effect that he does not make a lot of money from my account and gave the impression that we were not important clients. So I helped Jim out and fired him two weeks later after I found someone new. Now he doesn't have to worry about this unimportant client anymore, not that he ever did.
The long and the short of this can be summed up in the fact that Jim Waters has a major attitude problem and thinks he is a lot more accomplished than he is. But I suppose congratulations to him that his business is so successful that he can take on accounts from unimportant clients and treat their properties like they don't matter until they get tired of it and Jim thinking there are no consequences for this type of unprofessional behavior. It is important that people are able to see this type of treatment of a client by Earthscapes.
Jim likes to talk a lot and will not listen to a thing you say. He will just shape the conversation the way he needs it to go and that's the bottom line. If you try and go back at him with any type of feedback he does not like, he gets a major attitude problem, which is surprising in a service business. He does inferior work and then tries to persuade you that he is doing great work and that he is doing you a favor in many cases. It is actually quite comical at times, but it is time consuming to deal with and in my case we had to pay a new company to fix a lot of the problems he created. And in reference to cost, several times Jim mentioned to me that he did things a certain way because he was trying to save me money. I never asked him to save me money, I asked him to make my property look nice and to tell me how much it will cost to do that. In my experience, any time someone says they are trying to save you money it is usually the complete opposite of that. I do not need a guy like Jim Waters to worry about saving money for me, I needed him to make my property look nice and to show a little respect for my property and his client overall. This is not something he is able to do for his unimportant clients so be aware of this in case you fall into this category. read more
