I had Joe trim up four of my trees that needed a lot of work. He and Chris were super thorough on the first three of them, and it look longer than they thought it would, and my mulberry tree was really heavy, he said. They removed 6000 pounds of stuff - 3 tons, that's a lot. The last one still has some dead undergrowth that I want to get cleaned up. Today, Joe said he only quoted me on elevating the tree and separating it from the other tree and the house and the wires. He did all of that really well. Getting rid of the dead sticks was not part of the work. So, if you're like me, and you want all the dead sticks and branches removed when your tree is trimmed, make sure you let Joe know that and he'll include it in the price.
I wish the communication had been better. The job also included getting compost added to the yard. It didn't happen when the trees were trimmed, which was what I was expecting. So then I was texting about when the compost would happen and I asked several times about the dead undergrowth, but that aspect was never acknowledged (today, I found out that Joe was planning on bringing a saw along with the compost, so it's nice to know that now). The compost job was attempted one week later, but it didn't work out because the City of Tempe ran out of compost. Joe told me he heard there would be compost in the next week or two. I called Tempe the next morning, and they told me it would be 4-6 weeks. I can't wait that long, so I'll just have to buy bags of compost and top soil and hope for the best. Since the compost job wouldn't happen, I texted Joe about that undergrowth, and ten hours later, Joe replied that he would do it in a week. This was yesterday. I'm not going to wait a week, though, because I need to plant my grass seed this weekend. I'll attempt to remove those dead branches tomorrow with my crappy ladder and pole saw. Joe and Chris do great work, but we faced some unfortunate circumstances--my job was more difficult than he expected; I had wrong expectations that all the dead branches/sticks would be removed; the compost job was delayed and then canceled; and communication was less than ideal. The work they did was great, and they cleaned up really well too.