I hired Innovative Nursery in Chardon to regrade my gravel driveway and was given an estimate of just over $1300. I signed the estimate and they came out and did the work, but I was surprised when the job took only one person (probably paid at most $30.00/hr) less than 2 hours to complete. While the work was decent (not great, but decent), it still seemed that the estimate had been grossly overstated. I waited a week for a statement with an updated price, but it never came. I kept thinking about this, trying to figure out how the costs associated with a one person job on a tractor with a scraping tool for 2 hours could justify charging me $650/hr, especially when there were no additional materials needed as part of the job. The updated price never came so I emailed the owner and asked for an itemized bill. He called and said he was confused about what I meant by an itemized bill and I said that I was asking for a breakdown of the charges so I could understand how he arrived at the total price. He said that was irrelevant, the price was what it was and that I had signed off on the estimate. I said yes, I had signed the estimate, not an invoice. We went round and round and he said that the cost of the job was irrelevant and that the estimate he gave me was the quote of the job no matter how long it took and the breakdown was proprietary. Finally, he listed the expenses as wages, insurance, the tractor and transportation, but when I asked him what the costs were associated with those items, he kept telling me that the pricing was "proprietary." I specifically asked if the price of gas was proprietary, if the price of the tractor was proprietary, if the price of insurance was proprietary, etc. so he switched to claiming the accounting software he used was proprietary. While I get that Yardbook would probably consider their software proprietary, the pricing data the owner of Innovative Nursery, or someone in his company, would have input into the software was not proprietary which can only lead to the conclusion that the owner either doesn't know the ins and outs of his own business or that he had something to hide. Instead of having a civil conversation with me and simply explaining how he arrived at his numbers so I could understand where he was coming from, the owner launched a bunch of threats and accusations at me, so when I got off the phone with him I went on AI to figure out the costs I mentioned above as well as several others that I figured were associated with the job. I was right about the wage of a skilled landscaping employee being at most $30/hr, but was off on other costs. Still, using the most conservative costs I found, I came up with total expenses for the job of $487 and rounded up to $500 in case there were a couple small expenses I had missed. Since the total I came up with was considerably more than my original estimate of $300, I will not pursue this any further (I still think my estimate of $300 for the job is closer to accurate given how generous I was with the numbers, but again, I will give the owner the benefit of the doubt). Still, a $500 cost point for the $1300 price estimate leaves 62% in profit for the owner when a profit margin of up to 20% is more typical for a small landscaping business and most businesses in general. Given the level of incompetency of the owner in knowing and understanding his own business and the ramifications of that lack of knowledge, or his lack of honesty and transparency (people who have nothing to hide, hide nothing) as well as his lack of professionalism and a profit margin that can only be described as greedy, I cannot recommend Innovative Nursery or its services at all. read more