This company was hired by our neighbor to clear snow during the blizzard. I am writing this because no family should have to deal with this, and I want to give an honest account of what I personally witnessed.
The day before the main incident, my mother was outside shoveling when she calmly approached our neighbor and asked him to pass along to the crew he had hired that they should not deposit snow onto our property. He acknowledged it. The crew came back the following morning and did the same thing again.
On the second morning, my mother stepped outside around 9:41 AM and politely asked the crew to stop putting snow on our driveway. The owner's first response was a sarcastic "WOW, Good morning." She made clear she had no interest in arguing and reminded him this had happened the day before. Instead of addressing it he gave her a lecture about getting back from the universe what you put in, then said no problem and did nothing.
My father is a night shift worker and had been sleeping. He came outside after the snow still had not moved and asked the crew to remove it. Standing directly in front of him, the owner turned to his crew and told them out loud to just ignore him. My father explained that he works nights and had no time to shovel. The owner responded as though the issue was future snow placement, not the snow already blocking our fence gate. My father went back inside.
Thirty one seconds after telling his crew to ignore my father, the owner told our neighbor he had already apologized to our family. No apology had occurred. That statement became the basis for every apology claim made publicly.
By around 9:58 AM the crew had gathered near their trucks appearing to prepare to leave. The snow had not been touched. My father came back outside, and that is the only reason it did not stay there.
He told them simply that he just needed that snow removed. The owner responded: what snow. When my father pointed to it, the owner directed a crude remark at him. That was the first harsh language used by anyone, and it came from the owner. He then called my father smart guy and said the snow would melt around June, and that he would ask God to melt ours first.
As my father and I walked toward the snow, the owner told us to leave using crude language, even though it was sitting on our property. At that same moment, the owner's son retrieved a shovel from the truck and slammed it in my direction while my back was turned. I had no idea this happened until we reviewed our security camera footage afterward.
I asked if we could work through it calmly. He cut me off. I pointed to the fence posts marking the boundary between our two properties and asked how we were supposed to get our gate open. His response was: so what. He then referenced how many properties he had worked, using crude language again.
My mother offered the clearest possible way to end it: just remove what your crew put there and we are done. The owner told her she was not smart, repeated that all this snow, all this snow, all this snow was from the storm as though that justified where his crew placed it, then claimed it came from the town plow. That was his third explanation. Before that he said his crew could not see the driveway, and before that that they thought it was a grassy area. He then mocked my mother's accent and physically taunted her.
A neighbor watching from next door told the owner she had been considering hiring him and had now decided against it. He told her not to hire him.
When I told the owner we had camera footage of his crew depositing snow onto our property, his son said go ahead and watch it. We have chosen to keep it private out of respect for everyone involved, but we have it.
The snow was finally removed nearly 27 minutes after my mother's first request. As the crew drove away, the owner's son flipped off our family on doorbell footage. The owner acknowledged this in his own response on Google. It is the only thing he acknowledged.
A few things worth stating clearly:
The owner was the first to use harsh language, directed at my father. My mother's first language came 25 minutes in, after the owner's son directed it at me unprovoked while I was making a factual statement. She was reacting to that, not starting anything.
No apology was ever given. My mother told the owner directly that all he needed to do was say he was sorry and commit to cleaning it up. He never did.
The fence posts separating our properties are clearly visible. I pointed to them. The owner said so what.
My family had known our neighbors for close to twenty years. That relationship is now damaged, not because snow ended up in the wrong place during a storm, but because of how this was handled from the very first moment. It could have been resolved with two sentences and a shovel. We only ever asked for an acknowledgment and a cleanup. We never got either one willingly.. read more
