Hi all,

I had a guy come and do some land clearing for me and my bill is ~350% higher than other similar jobs he has done for me in the past. My bill was $2700, with a $200 hourly rate for one guy plus $1400 in line item fees to clear 700x3 ft and 700x6 ft of low density forest alongside a narrow existing driveway to make room for construction vehicles, drainage, and conduit. No hauling of wood or brush, no stump removal, no reducing size of cut trees. We did ask that he remove large branches that would hit an excavator. There is a convenience fee attached for a fast turn around request that we have no problem with.

He is billing me under his tree service business, not his land clearing business. I am aware of the tree service business but have never hired him for that and was not asking for that kind of service. His fee includes climbing, claiming he climbed along the whole driveway to trim branches (not at all necessary). All of this work was performed unsupervised, which is fine, the job was simple and he has cut for us with only a text walk through before. No contract or prior estimate because of fast turn around request and he has done this exact kind of work for us many times before so we know ballpark what the cost will be.

To me, this feels like a bait and switch. Ram jam a bunch of unnecessary work (climbing to widen a driveway with nothing but acres of empty land in either direction, really?) and bill us under a different business and at a very different rate than we thought we were hiring (and have never hired before). Never a mention of this work being performed by his other business and at a different rate than we have paid historically. Even if they did mention it and I've forgotten, there was no discussion of different rates for this job. Not during our initial messaging, not when his wife reached out to me by phone to get some additional details about the job, not when his wife texted me asking for my info to put into their system (odd since we have hired him many times, but not unusual for a business to add new or better tracking / customer database), not when he was out at the site evaluating the job. His wife also claims that we have never hired him before, sends a picture of a text meant for her husband that my wife accidentally sent to his brother, who also does arborist and land clearing work (under the same land clearing company as guy in question) for us and has a similar name. I have two entire separate text chains with her husband communicating in detail about trails cut for us, including pictures and the company name and his full name, sent by him.

My wife and I texted him (so we could have a written record of the interaction, as we always do with disputes) and expressed our frustration at the surprisingly high rate (exorbitant) and lack of communication, and suggested a rate more aligned with his past work (350% lower than asking), no hidden fees, but keeping the convince fee. We explain that tree services may charge as high as $250 an hour, but that is a fully burdened rate not a labor rate, and regardless we did not intend to hire him as an arborist through his tree service business. We include examples of fully burdened rates of other professions trying to demonstrate that if your hourly rate is fully burdened, it is inappropriate to also charge $1400 worth of "fees". Also nobody is paying a labor rate of $200 an hour for one guy doing land clearing, and if you are going to do something that will significantly increase the cost of the job (climbing every tree along the 700 foot driveway....not what we wanted), you need to ask us first, you need to be explicit rather than implicit with your billing, particularly when there is no contract.

They claim that because of the short turn around they couldn't send us an estimate before the job starts. Fine, probably annoying or inconvenient to go out there, look, send estimate, then come back another day and cut. Isn't that what the convenience fee is for? For one thing, they had 4 days from when we discussed the job to when he came out to the site to take a look and "maybe get a head start". For another, it's a simple matter to arrive on site, read the written instructions, evaluate the site, come up with a ballpark figure, and send a quick text asking if that's still OK. Instead I have to text at the end of the day asking if he was able to make it to the site to take a look and find out that he's been there cutting for serval hours and is almost done. Like...thats not what we talked about but it's fine he's done a bunch of work like this before, I guess no news is good news and thanks for taking care of it so fast.

His wife texts back with a very strongly worded message threatening litigation for non-payment, a screenshot of the penal code section on service theft (lmao), screenshots of some irrelevant part of our conversation, ranting about disrespecting her husband's profession, acting confused and saying if we can't afford the job we should just say so and ask for a payment plan, and saying "to be clear, this is a bill, not a negotiation". She claims she left a voicemail 4 days before the work was done stating that she was calling from the arborist business. Not true. For one thing, I keep my voicemail full on purpose so people can't leave voicemail but still have to listen to my message giving instructions to contact me. For another, I never check voicemail and so I would not have deleted it. No voicemails show up when I check on three different apps. I have a missed call from him and then an hour and a half later I receive a phone call from her that I answered.

We respond trying to clarify and refuting the assertion that we were aware he was doing this work under the arborist business, and the fee was crazy even for an arborist. We have records of all communications verifying our claims including recordings of all phone calls (legal in our state). His wife continues to escalate and tries to put more pressure on, claiming that everyone knows that he has an arborist business and it should be assumed from context clues that the work would be arborist work at a different rate. "if we take you to court you will be summoned to court and you will have to pay 3x what the bill is now, and also the bill will be $3850 because we are adding a hazard charge because we cut trees near a power line at the road. So you need to tell me right now if you are going to pay so I know what to tell my attorney." (all nonsense since max small claims is $3k and max commercial is $5k).

She then proceeds to try to negotiate (the bill that totally isn't a negotiation) with a final offer that includes still a very high hourly rate and all the fees. She also reasserts that we are nasty, blatant liars and condescendingly belittled her husband's profession. My wife and I are autistic so we spent about 20 minutes reassessing our communications to try and figure out how we offended them so badly, especially since they say they aren't offended by our "uninformed counter offer". It must have been giving examples of a fully burdened rate? Regardless we feel their response was wildly disproportionate in aggression relative to our comparatively mild admonushment and incrdulity at the size of the bill.

My wife and I are very familiar with small and commercial claims court and at this point we are sick of wasting our time dealing with her and her unreasonably aggressive posturing. We tell them we will see them in court and our attorney will handle any further communication. Our attorney is my father who specializes in business contracts, is retired and has plenty of time, and is literally famous (among dorks) for winning a case against the Navy a few years ago. He tells me the commercial claims court Judge probably won't even hear the case because there is no contract.

AITAH?