Business ProfileforThe Collier Company

My experience with Collier irrigation was absolutely atrocious. If I could leave a negative star review, I would. To start the whole experience off I set up an appointment to meet with a salesperson on the property of the job that I am the general contractor for. An hour before our appointment time my office received a phone call from a very irritated gentleman asking if I was going to bother to show up. My office let me know that he was already at the job so I left the meeting that I was in at the time since I wasn't planning on meeting him for another hour. When I arrived on site, the gentleman proceeded to have a terrible attitude and act as if I was bothering him by explaining what irrigation the job needed. At the end of the meeting, I gave him my email and asked him to please send the estimate to me as I was collecting estimates for my clients to review. He ignored this request and sent the estimate directly to the client attempting to cut me and my company out of the sub-contracting fees. I contacted the office to bring this to their attention and they did discount the job by 10% so my company wasn't cut completely out. I do appreciate this, but if the salesman had sent the estimate to me in the first place as requested, it wouldn't have needed to happen at all. My client did choose to go with Collier as they were the lowest bid and the builder of the house had a decent experience with them previously. Then comes the day of installation, the crew showed up on site unprepared with no instruction or materials for the irrigation needed for the front of the house. I had to instruct the Collier crew as well as my own taking up more of my time and defeating the purpose of a sub-contractor. About 3 hours after the Collier crew left, I got a call from my foreman and my client asking me to come out to inspect the work done by Collier. When I got there, I proceeded to have my crew help me pick up and collect all the trash that was left as well as clean up the muddy mess left all over the front sidewalk by the Collier crew. This was extremely embarrassing as I trusted that Collier Irrigation would have left the site the way they found it and cleaned up their mess when completing the job. I sent an email to the office explaining my clients and my frustrations along with pictures of the mess they left. I thought this would be the end of my interaction with them but, unfortunately, it was not. The very next morning I received a phone call from my foreman and client that the backyard was flooded, due to the new irrigation valve being stuck open. The area that was flooded had just been installed with many small perennials that can not handle so much water at once. I called Collier and asked for someone to meet me out on site to fix the problem. We waited a few days to let the property dry out. When the gentleman arrived, it was the same salesman who had met me the first time with the same attitude and dismissive behavior. He claimed to have fixed the irrigation while on site. My client and I tried to speak with him about our experience, and among other comments his response to our concern was "The crew had the design, I don't know what else you want", "You should have called the office, I cant tell them what you say" and "Well this is just how we do things". Never once did he apologize for the experience that my client or I had with Collier. Again, I thought my dealings with Collier were finished but, of course, the system flooded my clients back yard again that very next night. I called the office again to have someone come out and fix the problem which turned out to be a stuck valve due to trash in the line that the installation crew never bothered to blow out when installing the drip line in the back yard. At this point I am unsure if the small perennials that were planted will survive after being flooded twice. I told the client to not run the irrigation system again this year and I will have a different company check it out in the spring for any other lingering problems left over from Collier Irrigation. I called the office one more time to request that the branch manager contact me. I heard nothing from anyone until the next day after I emailed requesting again that someone contact me to speak about my clients and my experience with Collier. I received a phone call from Lewis Collier, the acting owner of Collier irrigation. In this phone call Lewis not only laughed at me when explaining my frustrations but he told me that I was "Living in a perfect world if I think the irrigation system should have functioned correctly", told me that I was "Being Picky" about the way his crew and salesman treated the site and my client, refused to replace the plants that his company flooded twice should they die, and to top it all off, he ordered fast food while on the phone with me, putting the "cherry on top" of why Collier Irrigation should not be a part of the Better Business Bureau. I hope sincerly that no other clients have had or will have the experience I did with Collier, but I somehow doubt that I am the only one.