Our Dos and Don'ts
Request an Estimate
Request an Estimate
Do Ask for Insurance
In the state of Iowa, all tree services are not required to carry Liability Insurance or Workers' Compensation Insurance. If you have an estimate done, and they have a copy of the certificate of insurance with them, call the company listed, and double-check. You even want to ask for a copy for yourself. NEVER hire anyone to do the job who tells you that they will sign a waiver or that they don’t have to have Workers' Compensation Insurance. If someone gets hurt on the job, you will be the one held responsible, not them.
Do Get More Than One Estimate
Tree work is priced on the amount of difficulty there will be in doing your job, and the amount of time it will take. Different services have different equipment and employees, so there is almost always going to be some variation in the price. Just remember that you pay for what you get; sometimes the cheapest service will not provide you with the quality of work that you desire or have the equipment to complete your job in a timely or professional manner.
Do Make Sure the Company Doing the Work Is an Accredited Service
If you ever have any doubts, look them up at the Better Business Bureau of Iowa.
Do Call Us
If you decide that you want us to do the job, you have to let us know; we cannot complete any work without verbal or written consent.
Do Be Cautious
Please keep all children and pets inside or away from the worksite at all times while we are performing the work.
Do Inform Us
Please tell us if you have an underground irrigation system and / or where any utility lines may run. By notifying the staff of any potential problems, you are not only saving time, but you could be saving a life. If we are not notified of irrigation lines and we cause damage to them, we are not responsible for the repairs.
Do Be Courteous
If you tell us to complete the job and we go out to do it and find that someone else has already completed the job, you may be asked to pay a service fee. If you don’t need our services, please let us know. Our time is valuable, as is yours.
Do Be Patient
When you call to schedule service, please note that we will put you on the schedule. Chances are, we will be able to get to your job sooner than we have you scheduled for. If we can, we will give you a call. Of course, with the weather as unpredictable as it is, if we cannot make it due to an emergency call or heavy rainfall, we will call you to reschedule service. The reason we keep everyone on a schedule is so that we know who is in line for the next job. If you would like to have a tree removed as soon as possible, please let us know, and we will try to work you in. There will not be any additional charge for this.
Do Pay for Service
Payment is due after the job is complete. We accept cash, check, or credit cards. Failure to remit payment will result in immediate legal action.
Don’t Pay for an Estimate
Estimates should be provided free of charge by most businesses, especially tree services. However, if you feel that the estimator is ever trying to talk you into doing more work than you want to be done, or taking down trees that you weren’t planning on removing, simply accept the estimate and then call another service to give you an estimate. Or, ask them to explain in writing why they feel the additional work should be done.
Also, beware of businesses that simply tell you that they charge a minimum hourly wage for all jobs and that they don’t provide estimates. Chances are, if you tell them to come out and do the job, they will spend the entire day working on a tree that should only take one hour to remove, and then charge you for the entire day.
Don’t Hire Someone Before Getting an Estimate
Frequently we get calls for an estimate and when we arrive we are told that they already have a crew on the way or the job has already been completed. This becomes a waste of our time and one of the best ways to overpay for service. When people are so anxious to get tree work performed in a hurry that they don’t care who does it and call someone to do the job site unseen, the company will be more than willing to send a crew out immediately.
These “immediate service crews” charge you up to ten times the normal amount you would pay if you had gotten several estimates. If you ever feel that a tree needs to come down immediately, please let us know, so that we can send someone out quickly to look at the tree. A true emergency would be if a tree gets hit by lightning and is leaning towards your house, or a tree looks as if it is about to uproot and hit your home or automobile, or something like that.
A tree that you want to be removed immediately because you have friends coming over for the weekend and you don’t want them seeing the tree because you think it's ugly, is not considered a true emergency. If it is not an emergency, we will try to work you in as we can.
Don’t Pay Any Money Until the Job Is Finished
On occasion, when working on very long projects that take more than a week, a service may ask for partial payment. This is fine – just don’t pay any more than you think has been done, and never pay the entire amount upfront. If a service asks for money upfront, walk away – in most cases, these people will take the money and leave you with an incomplete job.
Don’t Do The Cleanup Yourself
A lot of people think they can just rent a chipper and grind the brush themselves, but the brush is usually more than the chipper can handle, and much heavier than most people can tolerate dragging. Another alternative is that people think they will save money by taking down the trees, and then just hiring a tree service to clean up the mess.
We charge very little extra to haul away the debris when we take the trees down ourselves because we clean up the mess as it hits the ground. When we have to go back behind someone else and clean up their mess, which is usually in piles around the yard, it takes more time to clean it up, meaning more money that you have to spend. The safest, fastest, and most inexpensive way to remove trees is to
call an expert at
D & D Tree Service Inc.
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D & D Tree Service Inc
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