Thanks Custom Outlooks, for wasting my time.
My project consists of tearing out an old deck in the back yard, removing a large tree and 16 much smaller trees, forming and backfilling a new raised deck area with fill, and paving over it with travertine, and installing pavers on the east side of the house in addition to trimming some large trees.
My project is not a 6-figure job but for damn sure, it's a decent 5-figure job for a contractor with enough integrity and business sense to follow through.
Having kept a Custom Outlooks advertisement and business card from a prior home & garden show, I set up an appointment with Jesus to come to my home on June 3.
Jesus arrived and I explained the project to him when he arrived. He was professional, although on the downside of friendly. But, I wasn't looking for personality; I was looking for skills and value so I wasn't too concerned. We chatted about the project and he promised me a quote the following week. It's now been six weeks since I met with Jesus and have never heard diddly squat from him or anyone else at Custom Outlooks. Needless to say, I've gotten other estimates and permanently crossed Custom Outlooks off my list. They've wasted their time and mine. And now, they'll have the benefit of showing how unreliable they are to any customers foolish enough to ignore this review.
One other note--which I'm putting in the category of Just Plain Weird: After Jesus and I talked in my back yard about my project, I left him alone to finalize measurements, photos etc. (I'm not totally sure what he was doing out there). I came inside and sat on the couch to wait for him after telling him to just come in the back door when he was finished and I'd let him out the front door. There is no other way out of my back yard except to come through the house. There is a double gate--which is locked at all times. So other than coming to the back door and walking back through my house, the only way out of the back yard is literally, to jump the fence. Through the back windows, I saw Jesus walking around for a few minutes after I came inside...and then, I didn't. After about 10 minutes of not seeing any more movement in the back yard, I walked outside and found he'd vanished!. I checked in front of my house, and sure enough, his vehicle was gone. I'm not sure when he left or why he didn't simply come to the back door as I'd instructed. Maybe he knew he was going to ghost me and wanted to run off without any insincere pleasantries and without promising me--again--that he'd send me an estimate. Either way, it's just weird as hell that instead of coming back through the house, or at least knocking on the French doors that lead to our back yard, he chose to skulk off without a word by JUMPING THE FENCE. What a freakin' oddball!
Perhaps the current state of the AZ home building and remodeling industry makes companies like Custom Outlooks think they only have to take jobs from folks with a blank dirt lot and a blank checkbook so they can soak people on high-dollar, fancy-schmancy jobs that include lots of design work and markup. But if that's the case, why not just tell me? I'd much rather have had Jesus tell me something like: based on the size of your job, we'd have a really hard time squeezing it in among our larger projects so you'll probably be better off contacting another company, vs. ghosting me after wasting my time and promising me an estimate that never came.
I get it: construction trades--including landscapers--are living the high life right now. Housing starts in the Phoenix area are up and the remodeling industry is booming. There's tons of work and prices are hugely inflated. Lots of contractors believe they can pick and choose what they think are the cream of the crop jobs and treat everyone else like crap without even so much as an explanation, much less an apology for not doing what they said they'd do. But if Custom Outlooks really wants to convince people they're reliable, they should be bright enough to know that boom times come and go and livin' the contractor high life won't last forever--unlike online reviews, which DO...
