After my previous 1-star review and frustration w/the work done, I was contacted by the First Option Landscape team. They offered to come out and clean up the work to right the wrong they had done.
It took nearly a month of back-and-forth emails, several visits by their team to discuss the issues I had and point out the problems, and 2 separate trips by their team to get it as close to fixed as I could ask given the situation, but they did clean up the branches cut mid-branch, bringing them back to the joints. The tree looks better now, even if there are still a few branches that could use some cleaning up.
On the whole, this was a pretty awful experience. Still, I'm glad they dealt with it and took it upon themselves to clean up the mess they had made. I only wish that I didn't have to keep showing them what the problems were - as a landscaping company, they should've been able to see the problems right away. I still won't call them again but I am glad that they focused on customer service in this situation.