... and yet they look great on their page: (9) No Limit Landscape | Facebook
I'll set this review up so that you can jump between pictures to see the low-quality work we paid for. But to learn about Manny Vitte's behavior and why it may be unacceptable to you, you'll have to read the rest of it.
Noticeable gaps between the turf and the bender board. He said he'd use steel spikes to firm it up, which sounded wrong... but we'll never know because he never showed up to do it.
The biggest reason Manny Vitte got the job was by describing the "zipper seam" that he does. It's superior to the seams done by others and keeps it strong and almost invisible, or so he says. What he actually did was a straight seam, and it's not even taped, it's nailed... and even more noticeable than the picture shows. And we have roots pushing the pieces apart.
The flatness of the blades in many areas is not easily seen in the pictures. Vitte Landscape and Design used their "skills" to add filler to the lawn and brush it up. The result is areas where the white filler is viewable, and many flat areas that I'll have to fix myself.
The reason for the weak seam work was because Manny Vitte decided to change what we wanted. The picture above shows the outline of our yard for where he decided to put the turf. You can't see the entire yard, but the back (near the wooden fence) has about 8 feet of space between the turf and the fence, and between the grass line and the house (left part of the picture) is 4 feet. The day he did he took his measurements for his estimate, we told him we wanted turf right to the house, about 2 feet from the fence, and about 3 feet from the brick wall... that's why he explained his "zipper seams". He supposedly paid attention, and didn't bother drawing out a plan (until way too late). That concerned me somewhat, but not too much because it was a simple request. It turned out he ordered enough turf to have no seam and he was going to lay it against the house, with about 12 feet between the turf and the brick wall, completely disregarding our request and making our turf-centric yard a dirt-centric yard. It was a ridiculous choice, and I fixed it by coming up with the design above. I was extremely reasonable during the entire process, which of course was before I knew what an irresponsible, unreliable company No Limit Landscape is, in addition to being rather dense (more on that later).
Our front yard was worked on by a much better landscaper. It does get weeds sometimes, but it took maybe a year for any to show up, and even now, 3 years later, they only show up in a small number of areas. This better landscaper used no turf and no DG, they just did a good job.
I ended up using weed killer on 179 weed sprouts 3 weeks after Manny Vitte abandoned the job. They came up in the DG, in the turf, in the rocks... everywhere. I still go out to get kill new growth every 4 to 6 weeks, and more during rainy season.
Two months after he put these three plants down, they were dead. Water was getting to them, maybe too much water, or he picked plants that needed more sun ...
... or more likely, he picked bad plants and doesn't know what he's doing. This plant had signs of disease the day he planted it ...
... as did this one. We told him about both that day and several other days, but this request was ignored for the plants he said he guaranteed because he "bought them from Home Depot".
A few months after that, all but two of the plants died. We replaced most of them with roses, which is what my wife asked him for. He claimed Home Depot would take the dead plants back, but he didn't leave us the pots, and requests for anything went unanswered quickly.
I'm starting with this later interaction that summarizes a lot of the problems with Manny Vitte and his work.
On 11/5, after a lot of assurances he'd show up to fix mistakes that never happened (with no message almost every time), we saw someone recommend Manny Vitte on Facebook and I, through my wife's profile, responded, as shown near the bottom of the FB picture.
On 11/6, Manny sent me this text: Sorry for the wishy-washy, on top of been slammed, I've been sick all week with the flu. We will be at your house tomorrow morning about 7:30 am.
On 11/7, he actually showed up with his son and Mike, a.k.a. "Irish". To date, Manny has had only bad things to say about Mike as far as his ability, so it wasn't great that that's who he brought. Manny also seemed sick. He said he'd be gone 45 minutes to get some supplies, but he was gone most of the time they were here, and by the time he got back, he said he was too sick to stay. In the time they were here, they did little for the list of things that needed fixing, and in fact made things a lot worse:
One of them took a small rotary saw to a sitting wall to remove excess cement. That worked ok on the side, but it was also done on the top of their very bad brick-and-mortar work. They ended up badly gouging the brick, it was the most amazingly stupid thing I've ever seen from a supposed professional (pictures below).
One of the bricks was loose. They glued it on, but used the glue to fill in the gap between the bricks Nine bricks with cement in between them, except for the last two that had rubber glue between them. I pulled it quickly before it set, you can see a picture of that below as well.
TODO: On 11/12, after he didn't show up or send any messages about it, I sent this message telling him he needed to deal with this (click the upside-down V on the right to view it):
Manny,
A little background... the weekend after the job was done, I had 3 neighbors who wanted to see the work. Obviously I cancelled that for 2 weekends, I didn't want them to see it until it was fixed, and it hasn't happened yet.
We were hoping to do a Halloween party for the kids, but cancelled it since it still wasn't fixed.
When I said I needed it fixed last week, it was to make sure it was done for Thanksgiving, even if I had to do it myself. The wall is messed up on top from the saw, and I can't fix that. I need this dealt with this week, I can't have a repeat of last month and miss Thanksgiving in the back yard.
Please call me, I need to know what's happening.
Regards,
Sal
Here's his wife Nicole Vitte's 11/12 response about how he did everything he was supposed to:
Hello, this is Nicole. Manny is out for the next week or so until he is cleared by our physician. He should have never gone to your house last week but felt Obligated even though being the condition that he was in because your wife was blasting him on FB Poway Neighbors page, not being exactly truthful either. We sent y’all 2 estimates and a contract all stating the same thing and work description and detail and I don’t appreciate your wife making my husband look bad when he has done everything you asked him and more!
Manny was diagnosed with walking pneumonia and has a really bad case of shingles from his midsection going all the way up his rib cage. He is on antibiotics and pain medicine for the shingles. Not only am I dealing with a sick husband but also have 3 other kids who have been home sick with the flu. I’m hoping that he’ll be good to go by next week with rest and no stress since we do have jobs that need to finished. That being said we will fix anything that needs to be fixed or looked at based upon our contract. When my husband is feeling better and cleared to go back to work your property will be the first and I’ll make sure my calendar is clear so I can be there as well. I’ll keep you updated on his health and with a day and time next week. Sorry for any misunderstanding and we’ll definitely address any concerns you might have.
Nicole never visited the site, so here's my response to her, which is also a good summary for this review (and there's still a couple twists coming up)
Thanks for responding Nicole.
Manny mentioned that you might come over, but it sounds like you didn't get a chance to. I wanted to show him and discuss what was still needing work, but when he didn't show up I sent him pictures, including:
turf that does not meet the bender board,
flat turf (still flat in sections),
uneven turf filler (in other words, it's very thick in some places, even after they broomed it out),
a prominent seam in the turf,
a loose brick,
a couple of diseased plants,
several plants that didn't have enough dirt between it and the hole dug in the DG,
a granite walkway in DG where many of them move and there are gaps,
main irrigation hose sections areas that should be under DG but were above it,
a crooked tree,
one tree with a water feed coming from the main irrigation hose rather than from a drip hose going to the plant (the emitter is literally sticking out of the main hose and too far from the tree),
a walkway with irrigation feeds and no plants,
a concrete stain on our existing hardscape,
slops of cement on the side of the wall
I mentioned some of these things to him right after making the final payment. He said no problem, and was also going to bring a planter "next week, since we'll be in Poway all week" (week after October 14th). Not only did he never show up, he also didn't let us know that he wasn't showing up, almost every time he made an appointment to do so. That's been the biggest problem, it makes it seem like he no longer cares to finish. Manny said he wanted the final payment to pay his guys. I can relate to that, but the reason I made that payment, and even apologized for not doing it until the next morning, wasn't because the work was done. It was because I liked Manny and I trusted him, and trusted that he'd honor what we paid him to do.
Manny didn't show up to see the problems until October 21st. While he was here, with his son, he saw all of the above and agreed it was bad and they needed to fix it. He promised to show up Thursday and be finished on Friday. He couldn't show up on Thursday, but he sent a message saying that, and said he would have to re-schedule to Monday. That courtesy is huge, and only one of 2 times he did it.
He told us he'd send a sketch of the plans for the planter for us to approve. Instead, he sent pictures of the finished planter on October 25th. Luckily it was nice, but at this point we're much more concerned with getting the original job completed.
After that, despite him saying he'd show up, he was back to not showing up and not letting us know. In the mean time, since we were still friends with him on Facebook, we saw all the work he was doing elsewhere while ignoring us... and he was not sick the 3 weeks he ignored us and broke promises to show up.
So he saw the Facebook response, unfriended us, and sent me this text on 11/6: "Sorry for the wishy-washy, on top of been slammed I've been sick all week, with the flu. We will be at your house tomorrow morning about 7:30 AM."
When he came over, he was clearly sick, and I was sorry to see him like that. From in the house, my wife heard him yell / cuss at Mike and /or your son "I'm a supervisor, I'm supposed to tell you guys what to do and you do it, not watch you the whole time, we're not supposed to be doing this work and not making money just because you guys didn't do it right." She was glad to hear he once again agreed the problems are real, but it's unfortunate that my 8 year old heard the language.
During the visit, they added some turf filler, but it's still flat in places, and nothing was done about the seam or the grass not meeting the bender board. But much worse, somebody took a small rotary saw to the wall to take off excess concrete slop and decided to try and get the light layer of concrete off the top of the bricks. 6 or 7 bricks are now have too-deep saw gouges. In addition, one of them used adhesive to connect the loose brick, but also used a bunch of adhesive to connect brick to the other brick... in other words, all of the bricks are connected across the top by concrete, except for one, which doesn't match in color or texture and never will. It's the strangest thing I've ever seen done by a professional. Manny wasn't there when they decided to do those things. I hope he still has the 6 or 7 leftover bricks he took from the house, we may need them.
I've attached pictures of what happened during the last visit. The discoloration on the bricks are actually sawed-out gouges, and it's ugly. I didn't get a picture of the brick with the adhesive used as grout because I was too busy getting rid of it quickly. I have attached a picture of what I scraped off next to the brick, I think you can imagine how it looked from that compared to the concrete on the brick next to it. Manny said you see the emails, so I'm assuming you saw the previous pictures. If you'd care for me to send them again to see for yourself, I'll do so.
We've been aware of the challenges Manny has had during the job, and he should remember that I told him that if he needs to miss a day here or there, we can wait. But that never meant that it was ok to make many arrangements to do work and simply not show up.
I wrote the Facebook comment, I wasn't a member of the group at the time. I believe it's accurate based on everything above, he's absolutely been busy and doing work for others instead of finishing what he started here. If anything is inaccurate, it's that I only posted what I did, and I did that for him. It gives him the chance to finish the job to the level we expected of him, explain that he did take on too much, publicly apologize for letting it happen, and assure everyone that it won't happen again moving forward. Had I posted the list above and pictures to back it up, that would be much harder to recover from.
The contract is vague in places, which unfortunately is bad all of us. However, we also had an agreement and a handshake, and your husband seems to be the type that works that way, so I didn't sweat the contract. But there's only one part of the contract that is questionable, and that's the turf. He mentioned later on a couple occasions that he bid it with no seam. The reason he explained how he did seams during his first visit was because he measured how much grass we needed (more than we have even now) and knew it needed to be there. When I saw the contract and saw seamless (or no seam, I forget), I thought "cool, he figured out how to give us the grass we want without a seam." I'm dumb, I'm not a professional, and I didn't know at the time that because of the dimensions of the grass rolls, he was changing what we asked for. I didn't know that until he outlined where the grass was in the dirt and it left way too huge a turf-free area. The allowance we made was to have a seam, have DG between the grass and the house (we wanted grass to the house), and have a bigger empty space on the side. Those were all my ideas, to try and work with what we had.
We haven't asked him for anything we didn't ask for before the contract, and the only extra was the planter, which he nicely volunteered, to help break up the large DG area on the side. I'd be happy to talk contacts at any time, I recognized it as something that should be fixed to help the business expansion he described to me. But I don't think anything in this list above is unreasonable to expect or over-and-above. Manny even volunteered trimming the neighbors branches and sealing the fence at one point. We just want the list done, with the turf and the wall now at the top.
Manny, I think supervisor for now means you need to watch, or a least tell them better what to do spot check them. Some of your team still needs mentoring, but I still believe you guys can get the job done.
Nicole, I feel like I've been fair, and I'm always honest. This message is giving you insight into why I think that. I'd be happy to talk whenever you'd like, I'm not a fan of misunderstandings. I hope everyone feels better soon.
Regards,
Sal
On 11/12, after he didn't show up or send any messages about it, I sent