John’s Tree Service

Ordered firewood from John which he agreed to deliver and stack. His idea of delivery and stacking is trampling and damaging landscape and expensive plants because that was the easiest route. He blamed me when I discovered what he had done, saying that it was unavoidable which was untrue. He is not the first to deliver and stack wood for me. Everyone else figured out how to do it safely and without damaging my property. Very unpleasant experience.

I ran into John and his crew working on a neighbors house. Was not to impressed on the trimming job I saw. But I just needed to cut down a Tree in front of my house so I figured it doesn’t matter how bad the trimming job looked like.
John stopped by and gave me an estimate of $ 100 to cut down the tree and $ 50 to come back at another day to grind the stumps down since he did not have the grinder with him. I gave the ok and after he was done with cutting the Tree down, the additional work for grinding down the stumps went from $ 50 to $ 100.
Not that the extra $ 50 was enough incentive, John never showed up after that. I called several times and he always responded. «Let’s do it in a couple days, I’m busy». At the third time he even asked me to call him back the following week to remind him… Hey I’m not his personal assistant!
Looks like everyone on Unilocal here has similar experience. I wish I would done a quick Internet search before hiring someone of the street.

If I could give zero stars, I would. I ordered wood from this clown. Paid him for a full cord of wood and got ½ a cord. I had to keep bugging him for over a week and he always had an excuse as to why he couldn’t come back. He finally came today with maybe a ¼ cord of wood.
I called him after he left and he began cursing me and threatening to «kick my a@@». I paid him in cash and some via a check since you can only get so much out of an ATM. I informed him that I had no alternative but to take him to court. He laughed and said I could not prove how much I paid him for the wood. Unfortunately, he was right. Avoid this jerk at all costs. It cost me, don’t let him cost you.

I thought long and hard about writing a bad review for John, but after 4 attempts to get him to come back out to complete a job, and him disregarding me each time, I decided he’s is just not going to finish the work. He and his crew trimmed a few palms and a couple of trees for me. He said he was done, I did a quick look and paid him cash. The next day I looked closely at his work. Wow they left a huge piles of cut podocarpus tree in the garden. I couldn’t believe it. I hauled it out of the garden and the pile was big, I mean big. The day after that a couple of tall palm fronds broke and hung down, I see that he didn’t even trim a giant bird of paradise as promised. And during his work at my house his crew had the nerve to lay on one of my pool loungers while John went off somewhere in his truck. Let’s top this story off. He failed to close my gate properly when he left on that day he worked, and when I came home, both of my dogs were loose! One got lost and it took two days for my to get her back from Animal Control. And I’ve called him four times, he either starts telling me a story about his backhoe (I know, nothing to do with my job), then he says he will be out that day. Nope. Nothing. So that’s why I’m writing this review and contacting the BBB and CSLB. Sorry John, but it’s not right how you’ve treated this.
UPDATE: I left a message on John’s phone and he called me back, yelling and swearing at me in the most belligerent way. I guess that sums it all up.

I will never use them again. We paid for a cord with extra to stack. We were shorted at least 20 c.f. I will stick with Buds, they don’t stack but you get an honest cord!

These guys are licensed and bonded, which is good. They did a good job removing three trees. However they were also supposed to remove the major roots as much as possible with a stump grinder — the hard part — and fell short. They basically did what they could do in a day, for a thousand bucks, and that was it. Huge roots remained. John claimed he would come back — claimed his stump grinder was being fixed — but never showed up. We had to hire someone else to finish the job. They also did a poor job on cleanup. We had to rake up many trash bags full of wood chips that John had left behind, scattered all over.