For your trees’ sake, beware of the “honest mistake”
We’ve all heard the warnings about scammers taking advantage of homeowners after the recent the ice storm.
But Sharron Townsend says we should also be alert for legitimate tree services making “honest mistakes.”
Townsend and her husband, Larry Bender, have a house surrounded by trees in Lexington’s Lansdowne neighborhood.
“A tree service came to our house BY MISTAKE last week and proceeded to trim four trees without our permission,” Townsend wrote in an e-mail.
“They literally decimated one of the trees,” leaving the 40-plus year old Chinese elm looking “like an arm with five stubs-like fingers.”
After discovering the carnage when she got home from work, Townsend called the owner of the tree service, which she declined to identify.
He said it was “an honest mistake – they were to have gone to our neighbor’s house across the street.”
That’s bad enough, but there’s a kicker or two.
“We had used the offending tree service a few years ago to trim a tree in our front yard,” Townsend said. But after they drove their bucket truck over her waterline and made ruts in the yard, “we told them … we would never use them again.”
Townsend had even posted a sign in her yard that read, “‘No work needed. Thank you’ as we had been inundated with drive by offers. They said they read the sign and thought that it meant every other tree service that might come along, but not them.”
They left her with new ruts in her yard, piles of limbs and a tree that looked like it was part of a post-war landscape.
The owner of the tree service agreed not to charge Townsend for the company’s work and to remove the limbs.
As for the Chinese elm, “he said not to worry — that the tree would grow back.” “Well, not in my lifetime!” she replied.
“So, we may think we only need to be wary of fly-by-night operators,” Townsend adds, “but we should also be afraid that a local company will stop by the wrong house and decimate your trees!”
