Not a good experience…read more
My wife and I have spent a lot of time and money on our landscape. This includes quite a few specimen trees- such as Chinese Fringe, Alaska Weeping Cedars, River Birch, Serviceberry Kousa Dogwood, among others.
I thought I started to notice that a few of our trees were not as healthy as they perhaps could be. I wanted to protect the beauty and investent we had made over the course of 12 or so years. I reached out to Bartlett to send out an arborist to examine my property and make suggestions.
Here are the issues I had with two years of service from Bartlett, which included pruning but more importantly preventative treatments for our trees. I will not into to deatl, but here are the two general issues I had.
1. I was the one, after service started, to notice problems with some of our trees. I am not an arborist, but what am I paying Bartlett a good deal of money for? They should be the ones to recognize issue and suggest treatments, not the other way around.
2. I repeatedly requested from the beginning, and over the course of two years, that Bartlett inform me of the schedule for the various treatments as I wanted to be at my house to see what was applied, where and when. They NEVER kept their word and let me know.
Really a shame as I thought Bartlett had a great reputation and I had high hopes. However, given my personal experience, I cannot recommend them to anyone in Harford County, MD.
***** RESPONSE TO MARK L *****
I purposely did not want to mention any names in my review and personalize it. But since you brought up Graham's name, the main issue is I have no faith in Graham. Graham is a nice guy, but I am not paying Bartlett for their congeniality. Here goes the detail.
1. It was AFTER Graham came out the first year, inspected all of my specimen trees, and suggested treatments that I saw the problems. Within two weeks of Bartlett being out to my house for treatments and for pruning a specimen River Birch (among other things) the River Birch started to exhibit MASSIVE leaf drop. It essentially lost 90% of its leaves. Graham came back out and discovered I had a Birch Borer and there was nothing that could be done. Bartlett then had to completely take down that tree. So at the time of inspection and the time of pruning and treatment no one from Bartlett noticed an issue with the River Birch?
2. Last year, after a season of service/treatment from Bartlett and in the middle of that current season (of Bartlett service) it became apaprent to me that one of my Alaska Weeping Cedars needles were a vastly different color of green and the needles were exhibiting curling and browning on the ends. I contacted Graham and he came back out. He stated he knew what the problem was and more treatments of some kind were started to try and help the tree, but he also informed me the outlook was not great.
3. Two years of consecutive treatment of my Serviceberry Tree resulted in no change either during any of the first two years, or in this year. Any money I spent on treatment for that tree might as well have been flshed down the toilet.
4. As I stated in my review, over the course of two years I repeatedly asked for a heads-up from Bartlett for the days I would receive the different treatments as I wanted to be there. Not once was I given this information.
5. I am FULLY aware that treatment in 2017 does not cover 2018. Does treatment and service in 2016 cover 2016? How about treatment and service in 2017, does that cover 2017? The problems I had with Bartlett were in 2016 and 2017.
So Mark, you asked what you can do for me? What you can do for me is explain why Bartlett did not identify massive problems with two of my specimen trees, when I was able? I hired Bartlett to be preventative because I am not a trained and licensed arborist. You can explain why after 2 years of service and poor results I should commit even more money to Bartlett?
So to sum up:
*I spent a decent amount of money with Bartlett
*Bartlett did not identify massive issues with two of my specimen trees.
*Two years of treatment on another tree had ZERO results
* Bartlett NEVER in 2 years let me now the day I was scheduled for treatment.
My statements are factual, I will leave it up to you and Yelp to decide if my expereince is worth more than 1 star.