Gainesville FL Tree Service | Top Tier Tree Specialist

Tree Service in Gainesville FL Hiring Tips

If you’ve never hired a tree service before you may not know what qualifications to look for when getting estimates or maybe you’ve hired a tree guy and had a bad experience. I’m going to share with you five tips for hiring a tree service in Gainesville, FL

Tip (1)

Get verifiable copies of insurance there’s all kinds of different insurance out there today there’s homeowner’s insurance there’s automobile insurance there’s life insurance when a company says they’re licensed and insured you hope that means more than just they have a driver’s license and automobile insurance on the old truck they drive but how would you know there’s two types of insurance that you need to make sure you have verifiable copies of when hiring a tree service the first one is general liability insurance so when you hire a tree service and they end up making a mistake while felling that tree and it ends up in your kitchen general liability insurance is what’s going to take care of that the other type of insurance that you need to get verifiable copies of is workers compensation insurance this is important because if you hire a company who doesn’t carry this and somebody gets hurt you could be held responsible for the injury many people assume that their homeowners insurance would cover this but in most cases homeowners insurance does not cover contractors some companies will tell you that they have a worker’s comp exemption but exemptions are only available for up to three company officers so if the owner has helpers on the jobsite they are not covered and if there’s an injury you can’t be held liable if you are working

with the company claiming exemptions make sure you have documentation of who is actually covered and make sure that those are the only people on the job site when the work is being done and you should always call to verify that the policy is active before agreeing to have any work done.

Tip (2)

Always insist on getting a written estimate this seems obvious but we’re amazed at how many times customers tell us they have not gotten written estimates from other companies if the agreements not in writing there’s a lot of room for confusion and error in what was actually included in the price that you were quoted a written estimate also makes it a lot easier to make comparisons if you’re getting estimates from multiple companies.

Tip (3)

Hire a certified arborist because there’s no state licensing requirement for becoming a tree care professional anybody with a pickup truck and a chainsaw can claim to be a tree expert but there’s actually a whole set of standards set forth by the American National Standards Institute which outlines proper pruning and care of trees the standard is called the ANSI a300 certified arborist like Paul are required to follow the ANSI a300 standards in order to maintain their certification if you’re getting an estimate from a tree care service provider and they give you a deer-in-the-headlights look whenever you mention the ANSI a300 standards it’s probably a pretty good indication you should hire somebody else.

Tip (4)

Ask questions about how the job is gonna be done will heavy equipment we brought on my lawn that could damage grass or irrigation how long is the project going to take well climbing spikes be used on my trees does the company follow a300 standards these are all great questions to prevent you from running into surprises on the day that the work is being done.

Tip (5)

Never allow anybody to top your trees or to use climbing spikes on a tree being pruned topping trees is harmful for several reasons and there are ways to reduce the overall height of the tree or to just simply make the tree safer without implementing this harmful practice and using climbing spikes on trees will permanently damage them.

At Top Tier Tree Specialist, we love helping people find solutions to their tree service problems. You can find a wealth of helpful information available at our website toptiertreespecialist.com

Be sure to like us on facebook and give us a thumbs up.