A couple of years ago, this outfit removed a large Hackberry in my back yard that was in danger of falling over at some point. Earlier, a very large, lower limb just fell under it's own weight and did damage to both my home and the rear deck and tree at the rear of my neighbor's home. My insurance company (Farmers) recommended Arboles Tree Trimming. I called the company and spoke with the owner, Phil Lopez. He said he was busy, but would take a look at it within the next 2 or 3 days. He showed up, gave me a price and I hired him on the spot. I didn't know if it was a good price or a bad price. I just had to get the mess cleaned up for my neighbor's sake. They removed the huge limb from both my property and my neighbor's property. There was damage to the limbs of my neighbor's tree that my insurance company would not cover. The young branches were knocked down, broken and bent and needed to be removed. Arboles took care of that for and extra $300.00. That came out of my pocket and I was glad to pay it. They are good neighbor's and I would pay any price to keep it that way. The rest of my tree had to be removed because the inner core of the tree was completely hollow and highly unstable. Arboles came back later and removed the old tree for $2,000.00. Again, I didn't get any other estimates. Mr. Lopez had a hard working young crew of Hispanic men, each of whom had a task to perform and did so without any noticeable prompting from Mr. Arboles. I was impressed with their performance. The only drawback was the fact that, as far as I could tell, not one of them spoke a word of English. If you had a question, you had to talk to Mr. Arboles. They used a Stump Grinder to completely remove the huge stump that remained. Again, I was impressed. They put all of my patio furniture, bird bath, etc. back in where they belonged. I wrote a check and they were on their way. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />Over the next day or two, I began noticing damage to several items. The concrete base for my bird bath was crushed on one corner where they had dropped big piece of the trunk from a substantial height. There were deep dents around my backyard where they had simply let the heavy pieces of trunk just drop to the ground from varying heights from 10' to 50'. The lower hinge on my privacy gate fence was bent backwards to the point that the gate would not fully close. The gate had been forced open past the point where the grade prevented further opening. Unknown to me, the young men had discovered that this gate offered a quicker route to the front street. Using a very large "2-wheeler", (built and shaped specifically for transporting large sections of tree trunk) they were moving the sections along the side of the house and down a terrace to the curb. At some point, it was obvious that the weight and momentum of the 2-wheeler got the best of the young man and took out an end section of a retaining wall at the end of my driveway. The break was clean (along the mortar lines) so they simply sat the wall section back in place and probably never mentioned it to Mr. Arboles. After all of this was discovered, I called Mr. Arboles. He said he knew nothing about the damage and that he would come out and take a look at it. I never heard from him again. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />The "drought" of the summer of 2012 took it's toll on a certain species of Pine trees in the area. My 70 year old Pine tree in the front yard just dried up and died by the time Fall arrived. It was heartbreaking, but it had to be removed. I don't know why I bothered to call Mr. Arboles about removing the tree, but I did. By the way, it's been my experience that when one calls Mr. Arboles, one can expect to talk to him with his phone on "Speaker phone". It never fails and with all of the shop background noise (he continues doing whatever it is he's doing while you're trying to communicate with him), it's almost impossible to carry on a conversation. I always had to ask him to turn off his speaker phone so I could hear and understand him. To me, it was just rude and showed a lack of respect for the caller. I told him what my problem was and he said he'd take a look at the tree in 3 or 4 days and give me a quote. A week later, I got an email from him stating he would do the job for $1,500.00. Meantime, I had used my head this time and got quotes from other companies. They were all (every one) at least $ 500 less than Mr. Arboles' quote! I didn't have to, but I called Mr. Arboles and told that I was going to go with another company. He immediately stated he would knock off $350.00. I told him "No Thanks" and that was the last thing I had to do with him or his company. Do they do good work? At first glance it would appear so, but after taking a closer look and discovering the damage that his company left behind, it simply wasn't worth it. In my mind, the refusal to make things right completely offset any positive aspects of their performance. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />The company I DID hire was an old and highly respected tree trimming company by the name of Abernathy Tree Service. I wish I'd called them in the first place. Talk about professionals...