I am writing my review knowing full well that I'll likely be personally attacked by management, given their responses to prior poor reviews. That's okay, as I'd hope no one else has to have the same experience with this company.
In summary, the company was on time, the crew did a decent job removing the tree (though the more I learn, the more they could have done to avoid lawn damage like using a sheet of plywood to drop limbs onto). However, once the tree was taken down, they let 80% of the tree sit on my lawn over a hot weekend as opposed to hauling the tree away (which they committed to when I agreed to the removal on the same day the tree was taken down). I am over the top about my yard (I work very hard to keep it nice), and I know that about myself - I get that not everyone cares about that. But it's why I cared about confirming the details of the removal process, etc.
I was told the tree was left over the weekend because the removal crew was "done for the week" at 2p on Friday. When raising this concern, Matt (I believe one of the head guys... which is too bad) told me I was inconsiderate and rude, because he was up late the night before working on the trucks and I shouldn't dictate the hours/schedules their crews work. My response was "I have no interest in dictating your schedule, but it sounds like you either need more employees or better trucks, neither of which is your customer's problem to solve. If you don't follow through on your word (removing the tree before the weekend), your customer deals with the consequence."
Matt essentially told me that I needed to give it 2 weeks, and if the grass didn't grow back, we'd revisit the issue - he completely disregarded my concerns and simply made me feel like an idiot. He raked his foot through the dead grass and said "I'm not sure what you're even worried about, this will all come back." So... we waited. After the time passed, it was still completely destroyed. I called him and he said "yeah, I talked to my landscape guy and he basically said what we did probably killed it and burned it all up with the heat." Thanks, Matt - I'm glad your landscape guy could help you understand what your customer tried telling you a few weeks earlier.
Additionally, I confirmed 3 times (once when scheduling the project, and twice during the time the crew was here) that they would NOT lay their grass seed when the project was concluded. Each time, the response I received was "oh, absolutely... you don't want us putting our seed on your lawn - it's just weeds." Well, you guessed it. They did it anyways! I've been fighting weeds in my front yard since - fun!
I would NOT recommend XTreme Tree, especially if you care about the yard that the tree is being removed from. I'd specifically not recommend Matt, who told me multiple times he'd come to replace our sod and make things right. But, weeks later, it still hadn't happened, and I just kept getting texts that said "I haven't forgotten." We got to the end of June (pretty difficult to lay and maintain sod that time of year in Iowa), so I called Matt and said I no longer wanted sod. Instead, I wanted 15% off of my invoice and I'd take care of it on my own. Matt shared that he "could only get comfortable with 10%." I would think good business would be saying "I'm sorry for your experience, we desire to make it right, given we didn't meet the expectation we set."
I contemplated small claims court or just not paying the invoice at all (I was advised by an attorney that this would be a pretty straightforward an easy case to prove), but elected to not do so - this experience had already caused enough time drain. I was told by someone familiar that if that happens, they will come and dump a load of chips in your driveway blocking your in/out ability from your own home. Given our work and daycare obligations each day, I decided it wasn't worth that risk - but talk about a classy way to address your customers! I paid my invoice, and elected to express my frustration through this review, all in hopes of saving someone else the frustration.