Pool Specialists, Inc.

Pool Specialists provided substandard pool maintenance of our pool and hot tub causing us additional costly repair work & damage to our home. Pool Specialists has sent unqualified technicians to perform maintenance work on our pool and hot tub. In 2012, an employee, [redacted], accidentally left our hot tub open on more then one occasion. The first time he admitted doing it and came and cleaned it. A few weeks later it was left open again and this time the open cover was leaning on our decorative railing behind it & caused it to break and fall off our second story deck. [redacted] denied any responsibility for the damage when he was the only person to touch the hot tub during those weeks. In August 2013, another employee, [redacted], failed to properly maintain our water and my children and myself were harmed. Our pool cover was broken and was stuck on the pool for a few weeks. When this occurs in high heat I later learned, it causes the water to change and a chemical needs to be added to correct it. Despite maintaining our pool on a biweekly basis, [redacted] did not add the chemical. My two young daughters 5 & 8 and myself swam in the pool one time & our skin became red & itchy. The girls hair turned pure white on the bottom. I immediately called [redacted] & advised of the incident and was told that the chemical should have been added but was not. I had to take my girls for haircuts to have the bottoms of their hair cut off. On February 21, 2014, [redacted] was here servicing the pool and a bad rain storm interrupted the service. My husband and I were both at home and saw her on our back deck where our pool control remote pad is kept. After she left, we noticed that we still had a salt error reading on the control pad and assumed she didn't get to address the problem due to the rain. On February 24 I saw her here again on my back deck. After she left, the salt error message had been cleared from the remote pad. At that time, she must have bumped our pool heater onto 104 degrees which is the first number that pops up when you turn the heater on. It was very cold outside (approx 30 degree) and the heater sucked approximately $2100 worth of propane out of our tank leaving us with no hot water & no heat. On March 8, we immediately notified [redacted] by text when we realized the heater was the cause of the problem and asked why it was set to 104 degrees. Rather then accept responsibility for his employee's mistake, he actually blamed my neighbors for trespassing on my property, turning the heater on, & using our pool. He told me to install cameras! I was outraged! It was early March and we just had an ice storm a few days before. It was freezing outside & was not swimming weather. We live in a small, exclusive neighborhood with only 30 lots. All of our neighbors are close friends and most live in expensive homes & have their own swimming pools. His response was completely unprofessional. My husband contacted him asking if we could discuss the matter further & he refused to reply to him. We were forced to pay the costly propane bill ourselves. On April 15th, we were sent an email that our pool was serviced & received an operational check by [redacted] on April 14. We assumed based upon the propane incident that it was clear we no longer wanted service. A few days earlier our automatic pool cover had broken & the pool cover was unable to move or be opened. I asked our pool cover repair man if there was any way that an operational check & servicing could have been done to the pool with our pool cover in this condition & he said no. I emailed Pool Specialists back and questioned how servicing could have been done. On April 22, we officially terminated Pool Specialists. We hired a new pool company to take over maintenance. At their first visit, they discovered we had a substantial leak in our pump, our PH balance was off causing a substantial white chalking on our pool walls & our filters were filthy & had not been cleaned in a long time. All of these items were supposed to be maintained by Pool Specialists as part of our maintenance agreement & we had to pay to fix them.Desired SettlementWe are requesting that Pool Specialists pay for the propane bill we received due to their negligence (approximately $2100). We are also seeking reimbursement for the cost of our decorative railing to be fixed (approx $100) and the repairs to the pool performed by the new pool company (approximately $150). I would also like [redacted] to remove the lies he posted on my Yelp Review of his company stating that we didn't pay our bills and were fired by three prior pool companies. These comments are completely false and amount to libel. We have never been terminated by any pool company for lack of payment and he clearly made this up to color my negative review of his company. In fact, [redacted] himself told me when we hired him, that our last pool company owner had a developed a very bad alcohol problem and that is why he failed to show up on a regular basis for his customers. Furthermore, our bill is paid in full to Pool Specialists for all of our servicing work done prior to the propane incident.Business Response /[redacted]/Service to this customer was terminated in February due to failure of payment and sent to collections. This customer consistently would go months without payment and then argue costs and service dates. The previous pool service company also terminated service for failure of payment.The heater was disabled for the winter at the point she claims it consumed the propane. Please note the customer states: " leaving her with no heat or hot water" in the coldest month of the year. We have GPS records, water chemistry records and pool water temperature records that dispute the customers claims. The control panel on the deck the customer speaks of; had failed and was intermittent, turning equipment on and off at random from the first service call. The customer first contacted us thru the manufacturer of the control panel. The manufacturer denied the warranty, because the "indoor" panel was mounted "outdoors". The customer refused to pay to replace the panel, so it was never replaced. We have in our records all the text messages regarding this issue. The automation system is located next to the equipment and has a functional control panel on it that can perform all of the functions as the failed control panel on the deck which is around the corner and up 15 feet of stairs. Consumer Response /[redacted]/It is apparent from this response that this company is unwilling to accept responsibility for the negligence of its employees, and will simply lie and fabricate information at will to avoid financial responsibility. It is definitely a company to stay away from! We were never terminated by Pool Specialists in February for non payment nor have we ever been terminated by any prior pool companies. These statements are false and fabricated by the owner to try and color the legitimacy of our claim. Our account was paid up to date at the time our pool heater was negligently turned on by a pool specialist employee. We have proof of payment of this bill and every other bill issued by our prior company. We can produce copies of our credit reports showing our stellar scores. We also have emails from Pool Specialists proving they serviced our pool into April and have the email we sent in April terminating their services after the owner refused to respond to our attempts to amicably discuss and resolve our propane bill with him. The claim that our pool pad remote was malfunctioning and turning things on and off intermittently is also fabricated. The remote pad was less than a year old when Pool Specialists began serving our pool and the only issue we have ever had with it is that the buttons were sometimes hard to push. It has never turned things on or off in the pool on its own and this is just another fabrication. Our remote pad is right next to the switch to open our pool cover so anyone servicing our pool would have to go up the steps onto the back deck every single visit to open and then close the pool making the remote pad easily accessible. They also serviced our hot tub which was on the back deck. Our pool heater was obviously not disabled since it was found turned on to 104 degrees and our propane tank was completely empty. We have proof that the tank was filled a week or so before this incident and proof that it was filled again after an emergent call on a Saturday when we woke up to no heat and no hot water. First the company claimed our neighbors must have trespassed and used our pool during an ice storm and now they are claiming our remote pad malfunctioned. Clearly they are making up excuses as they go along. They have no proof that our remote pad ever malfunctioned in this manner to support this bogus claim. Only one person used the remote pad and she was seen by us on our deck using it, and that is [redacted], a Pool Specialist employee. We can produce an expert witness who will state the condition our pool was in when they took over the servicing and that Pool Specialists left our equipment and pool water in an unsafe and substandard condition. We are simply trying to recoup some of our damages from all the out of pocket expenses we incurred due to their negligence. We never expected to have our character falsely maligned in an effort for them to avoid accepting responsibility. This is certainly not good business practice and I guess we will have to seek legal intervention if they are not willing to negotiate an amicable settlement. Final Business Response /[redacted]/We stopped service to this customer due to failure of payment. Prior to stopping the service the pool was only serviced once per month in the winter months at the customer's request. We have all the documentation emails, text messages, gps, service records (including water temps), warranty claim and billing and invoice records to support our statement and are willing to provide them to anyone that would like to review them. We can also provide the names of several other companies this customer has defrauded. I believe it is obvious to anyone; this customer is once again creating an excuse to deceitfully not pay yet another bill from another service provider. My question to the customer; how is it the disabled pool heater used ALL your propane, but the hot water and heat did not require any propane during the coldest month of the year. I am certain if you do the math for a 10,0000+ sqft house it will use up $2100 of PROPANE gas extremely fast for heat and hot water. I encourage Revdex.com to follow this customer to other service companies they make similar claims against to defraud on payment of their obligations.Final Consumer Response /[redacted]/(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)It is obvious from the response that an amicable resolution will not be reached through this forum. [redacted] has turned this into an unwarranted and completely unsubstantiated character assassination in order to avoid accepting any responsibility for the incompetence of his employees. This is not about the money for us. It is the principle. To prove it, we withdraw our request for any reimbursement for the propane tank incident. This is solely about us wanting to warn potential customers that rely on the Revdex.com that this is not a reputable company to do business with in the future! Period! That being said please see my responses below so that the Revdex.com can make its own conclusion and publish this valuable information to the public:1. Pool Specialists claims they terminated us in February, 2014. I will fax/mail over a copy of the email I sent terminating them in April, 2014 along with a statement we received from them billing us for service on 3/19/14 and an email confirmation from the company on 4/15/14 and 4/21/14 stating that [redacted] serviced our pool and did operational checks. Where is their notification to us of termination in February and why were they still showing up at our home in April?2. Pool Specialists outrageously claims that we have defrauded other companies yet have provided no names of these companies because they do not exist. My husband and I have stellar credit and request you do a credit check on us to prove it. He had a [redacted] and I had an [redacted] last we checked which is close to perfect. This is a baseless accusation. How would this company even know of other companies we allegedly defrauded and why would they take us on as customers if they had this knowledge? 3. Pool Specialists claims that terminated us for lack of payment. Our last statement from them confirms that we had an opening balance of $1050.00 which was paid in full on 2/24/14 with check [redacted] leaving our balance as zero when the incident with our pool heater occurred. Why would the company terminate us in February as it claims for lack of payment if we had a zero balance? 4. The company claims we paid bills late? Yes, at times we did wait to pay bills when we had questions about our service until the questions were answered. There is very poor communication with this company. They often add charges to your bill that were not discussed with you prior to and that were not approved by you. When this occurred we would ask [redacted] or [redacted] about them and they would say "someone from the office was supposed to call you" No one ever called and we often had to reach out to them numerous times to try and figure out what the charges were for. As soon as we got clarification, we always paid the bill. In addition, this company has an aggressive and unfair billing method which places $25 late fees on accounts that are not even 30 days old yet. This is also evidenced on the statement I will send. It shows the charge on 3/19/14 for $75.00 and the $25.00 late fee imposed on 4/10/14. That is not 30 days, it is 22 days! We pay our bills once a month and no customer should be expected to pay upon immediate receipt and have to pay a 30 day late fee for a charge that is not 30 days old. That is why we refused to pay any late fees that were intermittently imposed. We always paid our bill in full and owed this company nothing as of February 24, 2014 when our heater was turned on to 104 degrees by their employee. 5. The company claims that they did proper servicing on our pool and hot tub and maintained it correctly. They forgot to close our hot tub twice causing it to get all kinds of debris in it and the weight of the cover to break our decorative wood railing around it. They twice sent emails that they serviced our pool when the automatic cover was broken and the pool could not be opened. They turned our heater onto 104 and caused us to be without any heat or hot water. I will send a copy of the text to [redacted] advising him of this on March 8, 2014. Most importantly, I will send proof from our new pool service provider as to the condition of our pool and hot tub equipment when he took over our servicing this April, 2014. He confirms that there was evidence that the water chemistry was not correct for some time, filters were filthy, pumps had substantial leaks that corroded the entire pump house, pool had etching all around it due to improper the water chemistry and in his words this was all due to "sloppy maintenance."