Choosing the Right Landscaping Company

After being in the industry for years, we have listened to many clients who adopt very low standards when it comes to landscaping companies. Maybe they have had three landscape companies to try to complete a project. After each project, they were not impressed with any of them despite their reputation, price or promises.

These are lessons we have learned from the experiences of our clients:

1. Never hire companies who are not an Angie’s List or a Kudzu member and make sure they have profiles that can be reviewed. Otherwise you won’t have any leverage. (Outdoor Makeover is proudly there and we will do our best to get a great review from you.)
2. Never hire companies who have less than 50 reviews, try to find recent reviews and those that are older to review their record. For the review to be statistically significant there must be a lot of them. (Outdoor Makeover has over 600 Five-Star reviews on the web.)
3. Look at the quality of the reviews; if the reviews are consistently short, the reviewer’s experience is average but not outstanding. (Read Outdoor Makeover’s rave reviews!)
4. Make sure quotes include design work to ensure your investment is high quality, is aesthetically pleasing and flows with all other elements in your property. (Our owners are designers and quality control who check on the job everyday.)
5. Make sure the designer is involved to ensure the project vision is implemented.
6. Find out how often you will be walked through the job and who will do it. (This is performed everyday by our owners to educate the clients and so the client can see the quality.)
7. Look at their insurance papers. (Ask us for ours.)
8. Look at their workman’s compensation papers. (Ask us, we are covered!)
9. Make sure they have a warranty page and you have it for your record.
10. Be involved with the project and review every component’s installation.
11. Ask questions. (We welcome this, all of our employees will smile when you walk in the yard and the owners will walk the job with you often.)
12. Find out what happens when surprises come up. How do they handle unexpected cost? (We stand by our quotes, in fact, on larger unexpected things, we ask you to split the cost with us, under $200? We pay for it.)
13. Do they ask for more than half of the contract cost up front? You should be very careful. (We ask for half, and the last payment will be accepted until you are 100% satisfied)
14. Ask them how long the job will take and compare.(Since we use centralized management, it takes us one-third of the time it takes most landscape companies.)
15. Ask to drop in on a current project, look at their employees and how they handle each job. Talk to the client as well. (Call us anytime visit our happy customers. We do every in our power to keep our customers happy, we like for them to brag about us behind our back 🙂
16. If the company takes more than a day to respond to you, they will most likely do the same throughout the project, there are no excuses. (We usually contact you within two hours.)
17. Find out who performs project management, if the designer is different than the project manager there will be miscommunication.
18. Find out what exactly will be done by their own employees vs subcontractors. (We do 99% of our jobs with our own full time employees to reduce the need for subcontractors.)

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