Hi. I am new to this forum and while I have had other pools before we just installed a new 30 foot above ground pool and the pool company has made it a nightmare. I am getting it resolved but I would love to hear other people's stories, no names involved, just to help lighten my mood. I am hoping this is ok to post.
My story is we purchased an above ground 30 foot round pool that was to be dished out to 72" - and it said so right on the agreement of sale. This was bought in January and I asked at that time for them to send someone out to do a pre-site inspection because of some wet ground that we have in our yard that may have caused problems with another pool from years back. In March, the pool company called me and let me know that the uni-bead liner that comes with the pool could not be made into an expandable liner. We needed to get another pattern and it would have to be an overlap liner. Ok - no problem. I did ask where is the person who does the presite inspection and was told he would contact me within 2 weeks. fine. Two weeks go by and no person who does pre-site inspections calls. Called the pool company again and was rudely told they were just getting back to work and would call me in a week. Now I am getting suspicious and wishing we had not paid for the pool itself up front - in full. (I know that was a mistake, but they kept telling me I would only get the sale price if I paid in full immediately)
After another few weeks I then get the name of the installer they use and contact the installer directly and it must have taken more than a dozen phone calls to get him to come out - grudgingly. Now I am getting angry. Pool installer comes, things squared away but I am still not feeling too good about anything. A few days later I get a letter with the installation date of May 17th (that is later than I wanted but ok). I called the pool company who promised me the pool would be delivered a week or two prior to installation. Fast forward to May 14th, with the pool being installed on the 17th, I have heard nothing about the pool being delivered. I call the pool company and they promise it for the next day. On May 16th, after many phone calls - still no pool. Finally they deliver the pool that night but no liner! It seems like it would be hard to put an above ground pool up without one!
Pool installer arrives May 17th and does the excavation and moves around the sand. Both he and I call the pool company to see where the custom expandable liner that we paid a lot of money for is. The pool company is rude to me and acts like I have a nerve calling. At one point the pool installer tells me the pool company called him and asked if they could just substitute a regular liner instead. Luckily the installer said no - and informed me of the call. At noon he packs up and leaves because he has another pool installation to do and there is nothing he can do for us with no liner. My husband and I jump in the car and drive up to the pool company, 15 miles away, and just before we get there we get a call that the liner is being taken to our house and the installers are coming back. We turn around and go home and wait another hour and the liner shows up. Pool is installed (luckily the installer had extra coping with him because the pool company did not include it with the liner) but we questioned the 72" depth - it did not look that deep. There were no screws or gaskets in the skimmer box and the installer did not have them with him. It took another 6 days of phone calls to get the installer back to put on the skimmer and during that time we had a bunch of storms that deposited all sorts of leaves and seeds in our pool from the neighbors trees 200 feet away that we could not filter or vacuum up because it wasn't installed. Oh and by the way the "A" frame ladder/steps into the pool only had the steps in it and - oops they forgot to give us the outside ladder and had none in stock. We needed to take the floor model or wait two weeks! Remember this was ordered and paid for in January and it is now the end of May.
Finally everything is installed and the pool is filled and we wait the 3 days they recommend after the pool is filled to let the sand settle. We then get in and our 72" deep dished out pool is only 60" deep. We then drive back up to the pool company, on Memorial Day, and he tells us that is the right depth. A 72" deep pool means 60" of water and he will not do anything about it. We also noticed that 14 of the vertical posts around the pool were off by up to two inches and he informs us we should have noticed that at the time the installer was there putting on the skimmer and it is our problem. (at the time the installer was putting in the skimmer he accidentally stepped on the filter wires pulling them out of the filter and we were worrying about that, then). I did not want a shouting match so I left and complained to the Better Business Bureau.
Today the owner of the pool store calls me - irate in his voice - and says it is not his issue and why did we complain to the BBB. It is all his sub-contracted installers fault and he has talked to them and will have them take down the pool at the installer's (not the pool company's) expense and he will give us a new liner. I asked who is paying for the water and all the landscaping that will have to be done and he said that is on us(meaning my husband and I)! The whole time the owner would not let me talk at all even after I had patiently been quiet and listened to him. I hung up on him and sent him an email that when he was ready to let me talk he could call me back but again I was not dealing in a shouting match. He called back and said he would get the installer in touch. Installer calls and was reasonable to talk to. I informed them that the pool company was putting all the blame on them and took no responsibility for anything.
As it stands now I am just asking the installer to fix the vertical posts so that they are at 90 degrees and to refund the difference of the price we paid for excavation of 72" and what we got, 60". They were fine with that. The installer felt that the pool should never have been dished out to 72" and should not have been sold that way. I called the pool company back who basically said that the installer, who they previously told me was the best and has been subcontracting with them for years, didn't know what they were talking about. He has since offered to give me a $250 store credit and then hung up on me.
We went with a local company because we wanted to have someone we could go back to if there were problems. That is a laugh with this company! We paid an additional one thousand dollars to the local company over what we would have paid online for the same pool and got less thrown in with the purchase. We also got the nastiest most unprofessional company we could have dealt with. There were no online review of this company that has been in business for years but I finally found that they were not BBB accredited and had an "F" rating with the BBB. No surprise there. I am not sure if I am done with this but I would sure like to hear other people's stories.
My story is we purchased an above ground 30 foot round pool that was to be dished out to 72" - and it said so right on the agreement of sale. This was bought in January and I asked at that time for them to send someone out to do a pre-site inspection because of some wet ground that we have in our yard that may have caused problems with another pool from years back. In March, the pool company called me and let me know that the uni-bead liner that comes with the pool could not be made into an expandable liner. We needed to get another pattern and it would have to be an overlap liner. Ok - no problem. I did ask where is the person who does the presite inspection and was told he would contact me within 2 weeks. fine. Two weeks go by and no person who does pre-site inspections calls. Called the pool company again and was rudely told they were just getting back to work and would call me in a week. Now I am getting suspicious and wishing we had not paid for the pool itself up front - in full. (I know that was a mistake, but they kept telling me I would only get the sale price if I paid in full immediately)
After another few weeks I then get the name of the installer they use and contact the installer directly and it must have taken more than a dozen phone calls to get him to come out - grudgingly. Now I am getting angry. Pool installer comes, things squared away but I am still not feeling too good about anything. A few days later I get a letter with the installation date of May 17th (that is later than I wanted but ok). I called the pool company who promised me the pool would be delivered a week or two prior to installation. Fast forward to May 14th, with the pool being installed on the 17th, I have heard nothing about the pool being delivered. I call the pool company and they promise it for the next day. On May 16th, after many phone calls - still no pool. Finally they deliver the pool that night but no liner! It seems like it would be hard to put an above ground pool up without one!
Pool installer arrives May 17th and does the excavation and moves around the sand. Both he and I call the pool company to see where the custom expandable liner that we paid a lot of money for is. The pool company is rude to me and acts like I have a nerve calling. At one point the pool installer tells me the pool company called him and asked if they could just substitute a regular liner instead. Luckily the installer said no - and informed me of the call. At noon he packs up and leaves because he has another pool installation to do and there is nothing he can do for us with no liner. My husband and I jump in the car and drive up to the pool company, 15 miles away, and just before we get there we get a call that the liner is being taken to our house and the installers are coming back. We turn around and go home and wait another hour and the liner shows up. Pool is installed (luckily the installer had extra coping with him because the pool company did not include it with the liner) but we questioned the 72" depth - it did not look that deep. There were no screws or gaskets in the skimmer box and the installer did not have them with him. It took another 6 days of phone calls to get the installer back to put on the skimmer and during that time we had a bunch of storms that deposited all sorts of leaves and seeds in our pool from the neighbors trees 200 feet away that we could not filter or vacuum up because it wasn't installed. Oh and by the way the "A" frame ladder/steps into the pool only had the steps in it and - oops they forgot to give us the outside ladder and had none in stock. We needed to take the floor model or wait two weeks! Remember this was ordered and paid for in January and it is now the end of May.
Finally everything is installed and the pool is filled and we wait the 3 days they recommend after the pool is filled to let the sand settle. We then get in and our 72" deep dished out pool is only 60" deep. We then drive back up to the pool company, on Memorial Day, and he tells us that is the right depth. A 72" deep pool means 60" of water and he will not do anything about it. We also noticed that 14 of the vertical posts around the pool were off by up to two inches and he informs us we should have noticed that at the time the installer was there putting on the skimmer and it is our problem. (at the time the installer was putting in the skimmer he accidentally stepped on the filter wires pulling them out of the filter and we were worrying about that, then). I did not want a shouting match so I left and complained to the Better Business Bureau.
Today the owner of the pool store calls me - irate in his voice - and says it is not his issue and why did we complain to the BBB. It is all his sub-contracted installers fault and he has talked to them and will have them take down the pool at the installer's (not the pool company's) expense and he will give us a new liner. I asked who is paying for the water and all the landscaping that will have to be done and he said that is on us(meaning my husband and I)! The whole time the owner would not let me talk at all even after I had patiently been quiet and listened to him. I hung up on him and sent him an email that when he was ready to let me talk he could call me back but again I was not dealing in a shouting match. He called back and said he would get the installer in touch. Installer calls and was reasonable to talk to. I informed them that the pool company was putting all the blame on them and took no responsibility for anything.
As it stands now I am just asking the installer to fix the vertical posts so that they are at 90 degrees and to refund the difference of the price we paid for excavation of 72" and what we got, 60". They were fine with that. The installer felt that the pool should never have been dished out to 72" and should not have been sold that way. I called the pool company back who basically said that the installer, who they previously told me was the best and has been subcontracting with them for years, didn't know what they were talking about. He has since offered to give me a $250 store credit and then hung up on me.
We went with a local company because we wanted to have someone we could go back to if there were problems. That is a laugh with this company! We paid an additional one thousand dollars to the local company over what we would have paid online for the same pool and got less thrown in with the purchase. We also got the nastiest most unprofessional company we could have dealt with. There were no online review of this company that has been in business for years but I finally found that they were not BBB accredited and had an "F" rating with the BBB. No surprise there. I am not sure if I am done with this but I would sure like to hear other people's stories.
