Most people compare garden maintenance quotes on the number and nothing else, which is the one thing that cannot be compared until you know what each quote is actually pricing.
These five questions do the work. None of them are gotchas, and any established operator will answer all five without hesitating.
1. What exactly is included in a visit?
Hedge trimming, weeding, pruning and edging are not automatically bundled together, and two quotes can describe very different visits using the same words. Ask for the tasks, not the adjective. "A general tidy" means nothing until someone says whether it includes the hedges.
A good answer is a list. A vague one usually means the scope will be decided on the day, by them.
2. Is green waste removal in the price, or an add-on?
This is the most common gap between two quotes that otherwise look similar, and it is not a small line. Auckland Council kerbside collection does not take garden waste at all, so it has to go somewhere and someone is paying for it.
Either answer is legitimate. Leaving material on site is cheaper and fine if you have a way to deal with it. What matters is knowing which one you bought.
3. Is the price fixed once agreed, or can it move?
An hourly rate is not a price, it is a rate. It tells you nothing about what the visit will cost, and that figure can shift from visit to visit depending on how much the garden grew since the last one.
Ask directly whether the number holds once you have accepted it. A genuinely fixed price should not move because a job took longer than expected, and if it can, you are carrying that risk rather than the contractor.
4. What are you insured for, and what will you not take on?
Public liability insurance is the baseline, and any operator working on your property should carry it. The more revealing half of the question is the second one.
Every operator has a limit. Tree height, proximity to power lines, work requiring specialist rigging, anything needing council consent. An operator who names their limit clearly is one who has thought about it. An operator who says they will handle anything either has not, or is about to learn on your property.
5. How do you handle a tree that might be protected?
Worth asking even if you have no tree work planned, because it tells you how the operator treats risk that lands on you rather than on them.
Auckland's Unitary Plan protects around 6,000 notable trees plus everything inside a Significant Ecological Area, and removing a protected tree without consent is a breach that cannot be undone afterwards. The answer you want is that they check status before quoting. The answer you do not want is that it is your responsibility to know.
What a poor answer sounds like
The questions above are only useful if you know what you are listening for. A few answers should give you pause.
- "We'll see how we go on the day." On scope, this means the job gets defined by how much time they feel like spending. On price, it means the number you were quoted was a starting position.
- "We can do anything." Nobody can. An operator with no stated limit either has not thought about where theirs is, or is willing to attempt work they are not set up for on your property.
- "That's up to you to check." On protected trees specifically, this pushes a compliance risk onto you that the operator is far better placed to spot.
- A quote with no detail. A figure and a date, with no description of the work, is not a quote. It is a number you cannot hold anyone to.
Confirm they are a real business
Low-overhead operators are not automatically a problem, and plenty of good ones work out of a ute. What matters is that there is a business behind the quote if something goes wrong.
Check for a consistent business name and phone number across their website, their Google listing and their invoice, whether they are GST registered if the job is large enough for that to be expected, and whether their reviews describe work resembling yours rather than being generically positive. A contractor who is easy to find again is one who has an incentive to finish properly.
What a good contractor turns down
Worth knowing what the other side of the conversation looks like. We rarely decline a type of work. What we do decline is a job where the details will not come clear, or where it is obvious the arrangement is going to be fussier than the work itself.
Not all money is good money, and an operator who has learned that will tell you honestly when a job is not a fit rather than taking it and doing it resentfully. If someone accepts every job on any terms, that is worth a second thought rather than a tick.
Our approach
We respond fast. Providing solutions and work-dates within hours, sometimes minutes. Auckland wide.
We are fully insured and fully battery-powered. We handle garden maintenance, clearance, and tree and stump work up to four metres directly, and we refer anything larger, higher-risk or close to power lines to a qualified arborist rather than taking it on. We check a tree's Unitary Plan status before quoting removal work.