Elite Tree Care

The crew from Elite Tree Care pruned a great deal of dead wood out of my elm tree yesterday. The tree now has a beautiful shape and looks well taken care of. The crew was courteous, friendly, professional and efficient, cleaning up very thoroughly afterwords and replacing everything they had moved. I have already recommended their service to my neighbour.

Riley and his team took down my 100+ year old tree last week. I bought my house because of this grand, magnificent tree -- the last thing I ever imagined was that I would see it come down. Riley and his team were exceptional. I live in a small semi-detached in the Danforth area and surrounded by many other homes, lots of trees and the space is limiting. They were able to work around this constraint and did an incredible job. The team was extremely efficient, professional, on budget and on time. They worked with my neighbours (even the tree haters). It took 5 days to remove the tree and they left the area clean each and every day. This was not an easy job and I cannot tell you how pleased I was to work with Elite Tree Care. Extremely professional, efficient and hardworking. I would highly recommend them.

We used Riley and his team at Elite Tree Care twice; once to prune some branches of a really tall Norway Spruce tree in our front yard, and another to remove an overgrown 40' white cedar tree. We were incredibly impressed each time by Riley's professionalism, and how clean his team left the job site. He was also willing to work with our infant's nap schedule, using hand pruning tools during her nap to be silent! Cannot recommend this company highly enough and look forward to working with them again in the future.

Elite Tree Care did an outstanding job dealing with the removal of a large oak on my property. Riley came up with a strategy to execute the removal in a cost-efficient way, and his confidence, professionalism and friendliness throughout the entire process made what could have been a very stressful experience worry-free. Elite always responded promptly to any enquiries. During the removal they worked efficiently and left my property cleaner than it was before! They are honest, passionate and knowledgeable about their work.

In early spring 2017, Riley sourced and planted two 100mm trees in my backyard - a silver maple and a bur oak. The oak tree was planted slightly off vertical, and to his credit, Riley returned within a few days to stake the tree exactly vertical.

By late May 2017, the oak tree was not looking very healthy. There were small caterpillars on the leaves and they appeared to be chewing through the leaves (gypsy moth?). Riley said he would come by and spray the trees “asap”. Three weeks passed and he hadn't been by. I emailed him but did not receive a response. Two more weeks passed and I emailed him again. Riley apologized for the delay and indicated that he was “spread quite thin”. I'm not sure if he ever came by to spray the tree, but in May 2018, my oak tree was looking really bad. I reached out to Riley and asked him what my options were. He said he was happy to replace the tree and said he would do his best to do it by the end of the following week [WEEK 1]. This was music to my ears, as I was eager to get the new tree in the ground.

WEEK 1 (May 29) – I reached out to Riley and asked if he was on track to replace the tree by the end of the week. He said he wasn't, but added "All next week [WEEK 2] is planting and we will be able to incorporate your work".

WEEK 2 (June 6) – I reached out to Riley to confirm he would be coming by. Riley apologized and said delays in his other jobs had pushed him off-schedule, so he wouldn't be able to get to my job that week. He said he would give me a heads-up two days before he planned to arrive.

WEEK 4 (June 21) – After not hearing anything from Riley in two weeks, I reached out to him by email and asked him why it was taking so long to get my tree replaced. He attempted to call me a couple of times, but at that point, I was not interested in listening to more excuses about why he hadn’t replanted the tree. I just wanted to know when the tree would be replaced. I asked that we continue to correspond by email.

WEEK 6 (July 4) – Two more weeks went by and again I reached out to Riley to ask him when the tree was going to be replaced. Riley responded that he had “tried his best to fit my tree replacement in with the rest of his spring planting but he was not successful”. He offered to supply a new tree and for me to hire another company to plant it. Alternatively, he said, and I quote, “If you would like to schedule an exact day, please pick any date after September 17”. Even though I was extremely frustrated with the timeline he was now proposing to replace my tree, I was not interested in having to hire (and pay for) another tree service company to plant the tree. I selected the date of September 18th. He then responded “Confirming your re-plant for September 18, should nothing become available sooner.”

WEEK 16 (September 11 &13) – I initiated an email exchange with Riley about the species of tree he was going to plant. In that exchange, Riley said “We are now looking at September 20 at the soonest due to this week’s setbacks.”

I couldn’t believe this! After all this delay, he was continuing to push me off, and he was still using non-committal language like “at the soonest ….” Feeling utterly exasperated by all the delays and excuses, and with no definitive date by which he would commit 100% to have the tree planted, I asked Riley straight up if he intended to ever replace and replant my tree, as it was apparent to me that my job was at the bottom of his priority list.

Riley responded by saying that he no longer wanted to deal with me. He refunded me the cost of the tree, presumably thinking that such a gesture ‘made me whole’. However, he now left me with having to research and and obtain quotes from other tree service companies to get a tree planted.

Fortunately, I was able to have a different tree service company source and plant a new tree for me (they did it on a one week turnaround!!).

On a whole, my experience with Riley was that he was very good at the ‘front-end’ of the transaction (i.e. the initial planting of the trees), but that his dedication and commitment to his clients (once he already has their money), was lacking.

I have two big tree branches draping over the roof on the front and back of the house. These guys came and trim them. The clean up was meticulous. They even removed some fallen branch from my backyard without being asked! Very professional and good service. I will use them again.

4 trees gone in one morning! What an improvement. They responded quickly and cleaned up afterwards. I would highly reccomend this company. I have asked them back again to do some pruning on my remaining trees.

We move house a couple of years ago and the large Manitoba maple in our new backyard was in need of pruning, owing to many dead branches that threatened to fall on our kids as they played in the backyard and some structurally unsound branches over a parking space.

We contacted 3 companies for quotes and where the other two said either it wasn't possible to get all the dead branches or high-balled the quote as they didn't want to deal with our "weed" tree, Elite provided a very competitive quote.

The Elite crew amazingly got ALL the deadwood out (done by raising themselves to the tree canopy with ropes and pulleys), reduced branch weight where appropriate, and left everything clean and tidy afterwards (they even placed chipped branches as mulch nicely where I had indicated - I was just expecting them to leave a pile of the stuff).

Great work - thank you!!

I needed 2 large maple trees pruned on my property and the company was quickly able to provide a quote, answer any of my questions and provided details around liability insurance and credentials I was looking for. They were quickly able to arrange time to do the work, arrived on time, met all expectations and were able to clean the areas on my property and on the neighbours. I was happy with the work that was done, the professionalism and hard work of all their workers, and the ease of the whole process. I would recommend this company to anyone that needs this type of work completed, and would definitely use them again.

There was a large border tree between two properties that was failing. The space was tight. Riley secured approval with the City authorities for removal. He and his crew were very professional, courteous and careful not to damage any fencing or building structure(s). He charged exactly what he quoted even though it took two separate days to remove the tree. I would not hesitate to use Riley again for arborist work and would definitely recommend Elite Tree Care. I have passed his company name on to friends. He’s a nice guy to boot.