Treejob.com Lombardo Tree Service, Unfulfilled Contracted Work and Unrepaired Damage To Property During the Course of the Contract Marietta, Georgia

Racketeering Charges Filed! Conspiracy and Racketeering (RICO)
proceedings as well as claims for defamation and invasion of privacy are
being issued against Ed Magedson owner or RIP OFF REPORT and Bad
Business Bureau - under a Federal Court in Phoenix Arizona. The warrant
has been issued against Rip Off Report, Bad Business Bureau - owner Ed
Magedson for the operation including the sites: ripoffreport.com,
badbusinessbureau.com, and a number of countless other consumer
advocate sites being orchestrated by the extortion consortium. Ed
Magedson operates his illegal extortion scam under the guise of
consumer advocacy sites - to force innocent companies into paying him
to take down his dirty posts. Currently 28 Attorney Generals and 17
Federal Prosecutors throughout the U.S. are pursuing Ed Magedson and the
rip off report. Known to draft court service notices since 1992 (long
before he started this extortion operation), rewards of up to $50,000
have been offered for his whereabouts. If you do a key word search
under Ed Magedson you will see his shady past.

But the
legitimate companies are not paying. Currently there are almost 100
court cases pending against Ed Magedson including a judgement against
ED for Ten Million Dollars - under the courts of Nevis where he has
hosted his websites in the past.

I sent a demand letter to Mr. Lombardo via certified mail to his business and residential addresses, both of which were returned to me as not being accepted.  I had sent a third letter to the same business address via regular mail.  After a few weeks went by without a response from anyone at Treejob.com, I was able to involve a local media consumer advocacy team (Fox 5 Call For Action).  After providing them with all of the details which had been included in the demand letter (letter, contract, timeline of events, photos of the damage and uncompleted work) as well as all of the contact information I had for the parties involved (Mr. Duncan, Ashley the site manager, and the customer service phone answering service), Fox 5 took about a week to pour through the details and investigate a few avenues of their own regarding Treejob's consumer history. 

After performing their own investigation of other consumers who had similar experiences with Treejob.com, Fox 5 Call For Action contacted Treejob.com at all three numbers to ask if they would like to give their side of the story for their investigation.  At this point Blake, a member of the Treejob.com team who had not been involved up until this point, contacted Fox 5 Call For Action to say this was all a communication mixup on their end and that they had received the same demand letter which Fox 5 mentioned having a copy of, more or less telling on themselves since they never responded to it or accepted the certified mail copies.  He admitted to the damage to my property, the uncompleted work which he said was a miscommunication between himself and Ashley over the course of the month, and told Fox 5 that they would have a check out to me for the damage right away.  The next day I received the check and cashed it at their bank.

The lesson that I learned here was that in these types of situations you need to go the demand letter/litigation route early on to cover your bases, but that ultimately the best way to get a response from a contractor in these types of situations is to take your grievances and make them as public as you can as quickly as you can by all legal avenues available to you.  You have to create a scenario which could be potentially damaging to their reputation, their business, and their livelihood if they do not respond quickly in order to give them a vested interest to respond.  Being considerate and keeping things between the two of you beyond an initial courtesy call requesting their attention to the matter only plays to their advantage since they have more time and resources to burn and hope that you'll burn out on the process and give up in the face of a long and drawn out legal process.  Thankfully, my tenacity combined with the potential negative TV exposure finally won the day for me.

I tried to post pictures of the damage several times on ripoffreport.com from 3 different computers but the site locked up in the middle of pulling in the pictures every time which leads me to believe it's the site and not me.  The user help seemed overwhelmed when I asked for their assistance on this as well.  Hopefully this is something that Ripoff Report can work on for the future as there is definitely room for improvement here if they are striving to become THE consumer advocacy site on the internet.