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Wendy negotiated to perform landscaping services at our house. She represented herself as an expert in sustainable gardening and an expert with drought tolerant planting. I should have known not to trust her when she offered me a discount if i would prepay her a deposit by a certain date and then when I didn't sign the contract until a few weeks after she said that the special offer had expired. The contract called for her to install trellises and do basic weeding and training of our plants.
She did one site visit and stopped. WE argued over the Trellis design. She never provided a design, only that the materials would cost around $900. When I requested detail of materials and design a length mean spirited email campaign began. After weeks through my own efforts i found the materials she wanted online and suspected what her design would be. It was nice but I just couldn't afford it. When I asked for other options all i got was drama.
When she came out for the site visit she asked me to provide certain soil, fertilizer, etc. When I questioned the quanities or if there were options to substitute since I couldn't locate one of her requests she got incensed and indicated she was the expert and not to question her. I finally found the fertilizer she wanted and made a special trip to buy it. After her visit she didn't even use the soil (claiming it was the wrong kind) and she only used 2 lbs of this special fertilizer. (she insisted I provide 25 lbs' of it).
Then the problems really started. She now wanted to be paid for "advice" and consulting she gave me about the trellis and soil/fertilizer she already provided. When I explained that our contract didn't call for any consulting fee she indicated that she was an expert in her field and should be paid for this advice. She provided a new contract and asked me to sign it. I told her i would not sign a new contract and she can't just change the contract we signed previously unless I agreed she didn't miss a beat.
To Paraphrase..."Basically, I'm not coming out for more visits unless you agree to sign my new contract which includes a fee for my trellis design, or you pay me a fee for my email advice I've given you".
From the list of emails i have I can tell you this woman is whacked out. I've already spoken with my family attorney who has reviewed her contract and laughed. In California contracts require two consenting parties. She can't simply decide not to alter this contract and make up another one and withhold services or charge you for consulting you didn't agree to pay for. Anyway, be careful about working with her.
I'm sorry that you had to find out the hard way. It was really creepy how she just showed up at our house early in the morning without telling us. She wanted us to pay for consulting services and I refused. At this point she had been to our house about 4 hours. I had paid her for 6 hours and I just told my wife that we would simply move forward. She had made it clear she wouldn't work further without getting more money. Then it got weird. She just started showing up. Unannounced. Coming onto our property. I emailed her and informed her that I'm happy to have her continue work but she needs to give us 24 hours notice and get approval if she is coming onto our land. The next morning around 6AM my wife heard a noise and she was in our yard. I went out side and confronted her. She just ignored me. Then my wife and kids came outside. I told her very nicely that she needs to give us notice and that I was surprised she was there at all since she had indicated she wouldn't do further work unless she got more money. She then started cussing out my wife. i finally told her to leave.
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
Mitch Lichterman of Patricia Properties is not being forthright or entirely honest about his part in this dispute. What he resented was that the scope of work was delineated clearly enough to prevent him from demanding greater entitlement to more work and materials than he was willing to pay for. He paid for maintenance labor services and he received them. Mr. Lichterman did not pay for design services and refused to pay for them, yet demanded entitlement to receiving a full design and specifications for a plant trellis. I calculated costs for materials, tools, and labor, all of which he declined to pay for even he was offered full sourcing information to see for himself that there was no excessive markup. Specialty tools acquired and utilized in the trellis installation would be his to use or resell as he saw fit, if he had been willing to pay for them.
Mr. Lichterman also is not reporting the 65+ e-mails he sent over the course of 6 weeks arguing over the costs of the trellis, which was an extra service that he demanded but refused to pay for, nor is he owning the fact that he also demanded proprietary rights to a design that he did not pay to have created on his behalf. The quantity of e-mails alone constitutes unreasonable harassment.
Mr. Lichterman is also not reporting that his wife Mimi started raising her voice and then yelling obscenities at me the moment she saw me as she walked out of the house escorting some guests on the last morning I performed maintenance services. That is verbally abusive behavior that no one should have to tolerate from a client or anyone else.
Mr. Lictherman filed a small claims court lawsuit against me personally for the full cost of the $600 deposit for landscape maintenance labor services. By this gesture, in essence Mr. Lichterman was thus declaring that NO labor services had been rendered and that he was demanding that he receive all work performed for free. Unfortunately for Mr. Lichterman, I had time and date stamped photo documentation of my work demonstrating progress over time, landscape problems addressed (such as mulch applied too deeply and improperly that buried the crowns of plants), and before and after photos of plants pruned. I also kept a written log of work performed. The judge ruled in my favor. Mr. Lichterman lost his lawsuit.
I only wish I had known about the way she does business sooner!
I've had some work do by her as well and I too was treated in the very same way. I just stopped working with her and I found someone else that really knew what they were doing to complete my project. I didn't find out until later that she had run the same scam on a couple of other people that I've come into contact with.