Asplundh Tree Expert Co. 25 Years of Aggravation Burr Ridge, Illinois

I have lived in my house for almost 25 years. The local electric company employs Asplundh to trim the trees around the power lines. Every time the trucks show up on my street my blood pressure rises. In my first experience with Asplundh one of the men on the crew vomited on my driveway and left it there. Someone also used a small protected area of my back yard as a latrine, supplying his own toilet tissue. When I called to complain someone told me it was probably a dog. Using toilet tissue. In the intervening years they have hacked up my trees, broke the lattice out of my rose arbor, and stamped all over my perennial beds. I'm not unreasonable and I know the trees need to be trimmed but must it look like Hannibal and his elephants have just come through my yard? They always seem to show up just when things are about to bloom and then they tramp all over the gardens and crush everything just when it should look the best.

My experience last week turned out better than most although not satisfactory. As usual, the crew couldn't speak enough English to understand me when I talked to them about what they were going to do. I told them I wanted the trees removed as stated on the agreement I signed a few weeks earlier. Everyone nodded and smiled and I thought they understood. When I got home from work that night there was a small mountain of logs, some 18 in. in diameter and 30 inches long, green wood that will need to be cut, dried and split to be of any use to anyone. I couldn't begin to lift any of it, let alone split it. It was in front of my pile of real firewood so if I needed to use that I couldn't get to it. When I called I was told that I had agreed to let them leave the wood there. Why would I do that? It's as much use to me as if they had left a junk automobile back there. Big, ugly and unmoveable.