Design Tree Maintenance

I’ve used this company in the past and was very pleased at how efficient they were in removing a 40 ft palm tree. Today Johnny and his crew came to trim a huge citrus and a smaller tangelo tree. They were on time, professional and did exactly what I needed to be done. I will use them whenever I have a big job or for that matter, even a smaller job. I would give them more stars if I could.

Everyone who gave a one-​star review of DTM & the owner, Bob, are absolutely correct in EVERYTHING they said! Bob, and his company, are terrible, and will cheat you and trick you in every way they can.
They are very overpriced, but the estimator is so nice & knowledgable that you believe it will be worth it.
They started out with good work on one part of the total job, but I think that was just by chance. They never finished all the work agreed upon & which I paid for, charged me twice (since they had my credit card information) for an irrigation controller (and still owe me over $ 300), provided a different & inferior product to what I paid for, lied to me, ran out of paper when it was time to give me a detailed receipt — and never sent me a copy, never responded to my emailed requests, complaints, or calls once they got their money.
They did terrible pruning work & had a million excuses. They were also rude about it.
Everyone was nice at first, when they knew that I was getting several quotes, but that soon changed. And Bob spoke very badly about the other companies I was considering.
They make things very confusing, so you can’t keep track, by estimating, charging, & scheduling different teams for different jobs (pruning, feeding, irrigation etc). The people they send out to do the work, for the most part, do not speak English which makes it impossible to communicate with them.
Do not use this company!

Overpriced. Fail to complete the work correctly. Awful at communicating. And when something goes wrong (a healthy tree they trim dies a month after the service, or a tree collapses with the slightest of breeze) they will make EVERY excuse as to why it is not their fault.
Use them at your own risk. Truly, they are awful.

Don’t bother unless you have WEEKS to wait. Nick will get there to let you know the hundreds you will need to pay for their services and Walt will tell you why they haven’t been there… time after time.

Don’t know what’s going on with this company, I’ve used them 4 times in the last 12 years, things keep going down hill from the first time I used them.
This time the crew lead kind of argued with me about how I wanted my Chineese Elm trimmed.
I’m not an idiot, and I know how not to butcher a tree.
But I’m not going to do the work, because I don’t have the equipment to haul the mess away.
In the end I had to argue, I felt like I was being talked down to, and I did not get what I was hoping for.
Only the lead spoke English, it made it kind of hard to communicate what I was expecting.
Lead kind of talked down the sales guy too.
I’m not sure I’m going to use them again, I’ll have to see how I feel about this last visit.
Mixed review here…

Wish I could give 0 stars. This company is a joke. Worst customer service ever. They give a quote and then charge your credit card for way more, then go MIA. We wanted our tree cut and they quoted us for a trim and deep fertilization and we told them we do not want fertilization yet they still send a guy out to fertilize, so we obviously told him we didn’t want it done and he left. We then noticed the company charged our credit card for the fertilization we never requested or had done. We have left multiple messages and they do not call back. It’s been over a week and no word from them. We ended up having to report it as a fraudulent charge to the credit card company since they charged us for several handed dollars extra. Also, they had given us a window of 1 pm until 4 pm for the trim, but came at 445 pm. My husband had already prepaid and the company had his credit card number yet they asked me for money after they finished cutting the tree. I told them it was already taken care of and the Spanish speaking man asked again «cash or check?» And I just had to walk away. They have no respect and I would absolutely never do business with them again. My mother in law was also sent a bill for more than what she was quoted. Truly ridiculous.

Do not use this company!!! They claim to be «experts» but then send a bunch of spanish speaking guys to do the work that the «expert» quotes. We hired them to do a bunch of tree work in 2012 and was quoted a certain amount. We paid them after the work was completed but then they kept harassing us for more money, claiming we owed them another $ 100. After days of harassing calls, we mailed them there own quote. They finally backed down and the harassing calls stopped. When I recently spoke with an employee on the phone about our experience with them he told me he was offended that I called the company dishonest. Really??? What else does it look like from a customer’s perspective? I will never do business with this company again and I hope you don’t either!!!

We set up an appointment to have them clean up a tree that had some large branches fall in our yard and partially onto our street. They called the morning of the appointment to say they would be there between 2pm and 5pm. It wasn’t easy for me to get home, but this was a bit of an emergency situation. The time of the appointment came and went and nobody showed up. My phone calls to them are not answered. We finally get a call at about 6pm to say that they can’t make it out and it will be a few days before they can come. This is a company that does not respect your time and does not deserve your business.

Do not use these people! We had a tree damaged by a monsoon storm. Ben said it was a 7 hour job to clean up, & charged for the time. Crew came & finished job over 2 days in a little over 4 hours. Co. refused to adjust price, even though we had used them for several years & had referred other people to them. If you do use them you have to be present while they work, & watch them closely. Some of their workers don’t know anything about how to shape a tree.

They followed up on delivering a solution to make us happy and deliver the service contracted for.

I found this co. on
, where they supposedly «Take the Best and Toss the Rest». So much for that. We had them remove a tree from our backyard & do other trimming. We set a date & time. They requested we pay half up front & half upon completion. On the appointed day, they didn’t show. After an hour of waiting, we called them. The guy who answered was clearly asleep when I called… in the middle of a workday… and said someone from the office would call me back. The girl who called said someone else would call me back. No one did. After another 30 mins, I called back & asked if anyone was actually going to call, show up, whatever. She said that the crew was really busy that day & she wasn’t sure if they’d get to us that day. No good, I told her, we’d taken time off work based upon their commitment. They finally did show up — 3 hours late — and did the work. And did it well. We have no complaint with the actual work done. They told us they would call in a few days, they’d call & give us a time to come out & grind the stump. A week goes by & of course we don’t hear from them. I called, & after 3 calls back & forth — both to Mr. Sleepy & the office girl — finally scheduled the grinding. This time, they showed up, on time, & did the work. A couple of days after authorizing the 2^nd half of the payment, they double-​billed our credit card. I immediately called & told them, the girl said she’d have the man who does the billings call back. He did — and told me he’d have to research the problem & call me back. Wow. By this time, I’ve got carpal tunnel from calling these guys because they can’t do ANYTHING right — except the actual trimming. They did fix the credit card issue quickly, and the crew actually did good tree work (once they showed up). It’s a real shame that a fairly competent crew works for such incompetent managers. Next time, we’ll be calling the people that gave us the estimate that was our 2^nd choice.

Reading some of these other reviews, I find it hard to believe my experience is with the same company. I’ve been using Design Tree for 7 years; they have done everything from tree pruning and fertilizing to landscape recommendations and installation. Their arborist, Ben, typically comes out to go over everything and provides a quote.
Being from the east coast, I don’t have a lot of knowledge about western landscaping and Ben has always taken the time to answer my questions. His team has always showed up on the scheduled day; DTM calls the day before to confirm the date and time.
They have done a great job in the past and I will continue to use them. This last time, I noticed one of their workers used one of my flower planters as an ashtray, and that was annoying (hence 4 stars vs. 5) — but a minor irritation compared to the fantastic job they did with the yard cleanup and tree pruning I requested.

Our friends referred us to Design Tree and so I was pretty sure my husband and I wouldn’t have to look anywhere else to have our trees trimmed. However, after my experience with this company, I will let my friends know we will never use this company and encourage them to take their business elsewhere too.
While the estimator, Ben, who came out to price the job was friendly and appeared to be very knowledgable about trees, he took a comparatively long amount of time… close to 30 minutes. Also, he asked to come in my house to finish writing up his quote and asked to use our bathroom. Meanwhile two other companies were much more professional and respectful of my time. They averaged about 10 minutes and gave my quote immediately. One of the other companies typed up the quote on an iPad and emailed it to me from their truck… not having to ask to enter my home.
Secondly, Design Tree Maintenance offered to have their crew come by to trim off a branch that had broken off and fallen in our front yard and then return next week to finish the job. When the crew didn’t show up, I called to check on the status. Then someone named Bob said he was on his way. When he got to my house and knocked on the door, he didn’t introduce himself but curtly said, «This isn’t an emergency??» and proceeded to angrily look at the tree and tell me that only if the tree was falling into my roof that it would have needed to be looked at today. He gave me the impression that I was wasting his time and was very rude. I told him I didn’t appreciate his tone and that because of the poor customer service I would probably go ahead and cancel the job. He said if I wanted to discuss customer service I should talk to him as he was the owner. I was surprised to learn that he was the owner because his bad attitude and lack of professionalism would lead me to believe that he didn’t care much about the company nor earning the business of new customers. In the end, he hastily cut off the branch with a handsaw, drug the debris to the edge of the yard and was about to leave without saying anything. I went out to ask about the scheduling of the return visit and he agreed that I should call the office to do that. Then he tried to backtrack and make nice by providing unsolicited information and advice about the tree and make other small talk.
I immediately called to share my experience with the estimator and schedule the appointment. He apologized for my experience and I appreciated that. Then Bob called me back after he got back to the office and wanted to help me out by going ahead and scheduling the return visit, but I told him a date had already been assigned. He apologized over the phone and I accepted his apology. But after thinking it over that night, I decided I would rather go with another company after the treatment I received. Design Tree Maintenance said they’d see about waiving a charge of $ 150 for the cutting off of the fallen branch. We will see if we end up being charged for that absurd amount. But I would rather pay that fee and never have to worry about dealing with this company ever again.

We had Design Tree Maintenance do quite a bit of work for us last year. The bill was over $ 1000. When I arrived home most of the work had been done. The crew was arrogant and surly. They got in their truck to leave when I noticed they had left a mess in the front and back yards; I asked them to clean it up and they acted like I was asking for something ridiculous. Last week, and against our better judgement we called for an estimate to prune our 4 citrus trees. An arborist gave us a quote to have them pruned. The office called and confirmed the appointment. We came home from work and the trees weren’t for trimmed. The next day I left a message at both the office and with the arborist. The arborist called back to say the trimming guys came out but said it was too much work for the amount quoted. He said he’d be have to come back and look at the trees again. So in short, they don’t honor their estimates this place is the worst.

We’ve been customers of DTM for quite some time, solely because we have some big trees that need annual pruning. We don’t use them for anything else.
We’ve never seen any tangible benefit from their «deep root fertilization» services, and the mist emitters they installed around a pepper tree (to keep its roots cool?) didn’t work particularly well.
However, when it comes to actual «tree maintenance», there’s nobody better. Their arborists know their stuff, and the service crews do a great job of pruning, crown cleaning, and other «high-​altitude» services that I wouldn’t trust to a typical landscaping company.
They’re great at what we need them to be great at. We just skip their other services.

Never use this company! We have waited 3 weeks to get our trees scheduled to be trimmed. Each time we schedule an appointment for the trimming, they cancel or are a no show. We’re now rescheduled two times and they still have not shown up. For $ 435, you’d think they would respect their customers a little more. We have given up, and told them we will not be giving them our business.
Greatly lacking in any customer service! We will never use them again!