S. de Castell in Vancouver

The quality of the work done is terrific and it was performed within the agreed budget and timetable. What I appreciate most about Stefan and his team was the courtesy in how they treated us as customers. This goes beyond just 'being friendly' or polite. I work from home and they adjusted their schedule to make it easier for me to get things done. When we asked for a change to a piece of the project they did it without haggling or trying to avoid the work. This courtesy extended down to little things as well - like when I needed to get my frightened cat out from behind the shed and the crewman willingly stopped work and stayed very quiet so the cat would come out. I never once felt uncomfortable with any of the crew so I would recommend Stefan's team to anyone.

I would be very dubious about the "10 star" ratings here that seem to be conspicuously absent of any real details. It seems to me the most important things one looks for in a contractor is reliability and prompt communications. Our experience with Urbanscape.ca and Paul has been abysmal on those fronts. We were told the job would take 10-14 days. It took nearly six weeks. The first week or so was solid. Then Paul seemed to take on more jobs overtop of ours and most days workers never showed up when they said they would. When they did show up, they'd disappear a couple of hours later never having completed the job. The work started getting sloppier and sloppier and we had to constantly check things over. Paul would show up, hastily glue bits of unevenly sawed wood to the fountain, try and tell us it was complete and then we'd have to constantly show him that the joins on the wood were ridiculously out of alignment. Finally we had to give up on the design that was promised and agree to something much simpler. Even this didn't have great joins or alignment, but he said to try it out and he'd fix it if there were any problems. There were other issues along the way, such as their trying to install an electrical timer that was not outdoor rated and telling us it was fine. But overall, the big issue was a lack of diligence in the work and an utter failure to communicate no matter how easy we tried to make it for them. Urbanscape promised us a 1 year warranty on work and materials. A couple of days after they finished the job, the backflow regulator for the water feature stopped working reliably. We contacted Paul and he sent a reply saying he'd come fix it "later in the week." He never showed up and failed to return any phone calls. We've sent 7 separate e-mails and tried phoning many times with no return communication. There are things we liked about the design and we really tried to be tolerant. But we're at the point now were we have no confidence whatsoever that we'll hear back from Paul and Urbanscape.ca and we're going to end up having to pay a separate contractor to fix the work. It's worth mentioning that many of the crew members seemed like nice people trying to do a good job. Unfortunately they were continuously pulled by Urbanscape to go work on other sites. For the reasons listed above, I cannot recommend Urbanscape Designs.