My daughter and I hired Brian Abitz with SilverTree Logging to cut down some trees at our home on 9/8/20. The contract (Photo "A") is written to include 6 large trees to be cut down (Photos "B1, B2, B3"), stump grinding, grading and clean up. It states no charge for dead trees because they were selling trailers full of that wood for their profit. We were only allowing them to take all that wood vs selling it ourselves based on the fact that they were going to be cutting these trees down for us. We were told they needed $2,000 down to start so we promptly gave him a check. He told us they would have started that day had it not been for the rain. I believe they showed up on 9/19, 9/26 and 10/10 (if they came more than that I am not sure). Unfortunately each time he and his dad came they were only working on the wood they wanted to sell for profit not the trees we paid them for (Photo "C"). I asked when they were coming to cut the 6 trees down, I was given a day and that day would come and go with no one showing up. They once again showed up randomly to cut their for profit wood, leaving a mess and completely ignored us when we went out there, literally wouldn't even say hello. Due to not knowing when they might show up next we decided to mark all the trees we eventually wanted to have taken down within the next year with green and red X's. This included the ones in the contract along with at least 8 others on the property that were to be done in the future. We felt this would protect the trees we didn't want getting cut down by them. On October 5th, after waiting almost a month now for the actual trees to be cut down, my daughter sent Brian a message (Photo D1) "Hi, this is Michelle, I just wanted to check in and see what the schedule was looking like for our tree removals. I know that rain set you back a bit. Thanks so much!" and all she got in response was "We will get to u". A month later a storm broke a huge branch off one of the trees he was supposed to take down and it almost hit our house, we could no longer wait. On November 6th based on the lack of work, inability to give us a timeline, the absolute rude attitude and responses (D2), all the excuses, the debris left all over the property and stolen property, we messaged him to discuss terminating our contract and getting our $2,000 back.(*Photos E*) My son had a work rope around a tree and after they were here it was gone but my son wanted it back as he needed it for work. I know a work rope missing isn't a big money item it's more the principle. We messaged to ask if they took it by mistake and he replied that they "don't steal", funny because they are literally stealing $2000, our wood and our property. (Photos "F1, F2") Asking for a refund sent him into all sorts of excuses and telling us we should have contacted him to come work, which we had and only got lies and excuses. He then tried to talk us into letting him come start it that following week saying "let us do the job and be done with it" but at this point its been months of lies and we do not trust him at all or want him on our property. On the 9th of November he said when they do bills they will send us a check (Photo G1) earlier he said he was taking out what he was charging us for labor and for a small tree he cut down which dead. (Photo G2) We aren't ones to rip anyone off, everyone deserves to be compensated for their work. This, however, was stated in advance that dead trees are no charge. Besides losing all the money selling that wood that they took, we also had to pay the new tree guy an extra $500 to clean up all the debris Brian Abitz and his father left. November 24th we reached out asking if we could touch base on the refund and asked that we could have it by the 27th. We had a new tree guy coming to do the work and needed that refund to pay him. We never got a response. (Photo H1, H2, H3) November 30th we reached out again, as we felt we gave plenty of time for the refund check to be sent in the last 21 days, so I asked if they could meet and he says "i told u that when we do payments and billings u will get your check we just don't do checks at a drop of a hat". We then gave them even more time waiting until the 5th of December for mailing time, but once again no check in the mailbox. We reached out again on December 6th informing of legal action. Over the last almost 4 months we kept it professional and polite, we trusted his word over and over and now have to go through all this stress. I have Parkensens and my daughter has a heart condition and lupus and all this stress is causing so many issues for us. We literally had to let our family know (grandchildren, children, nieces and nephews) that we just couldn't do gifts this year due to our financial situation that this has put is in.. read more