I initially contacted Swim Clean to have a salt water system installed. They did come and install it after some delay and they did a reasonable job, although I had to take the control box off the wall and drill more holes to anchor it as they only anchored the top holes and it was not secure.
I called Alex regards a leak in the pool. After repeated calls where he would not even commit himself to when he would show up, he finally came. Without doing a through test (He did not pressure test the lines), he decided the leak is from a tiny hole in the liner. I explained to him that it is impossible to lose 30,000 litres of water from such a tiny hole without seeing any water under the liner. He insisted that that was the problem. Of course that did not fix the problem.
After multiple repeated calls, where he could not even tell you when he might come he finally showed up, charged me again, was rude about it, and decided that the leak is most likely at the return jet. He said he will have to dig and find out. I asked how he could not be sure as other companies guarantee to find the leak, he said it is an art not a science (it is not true, you can find the leak if you know what you are doing).
I had another company come to do the repair. Sure enough, the leak was not at the return jet but few feet away at the return line. That doubled the price of the repair as they had to dig another part of the line to repair it. Subsequently I also had air in the filter and that company precisely located that leak in the suction line and repaired it.
All in all not only I wasted a good portion of the summer dealing with unreliable amateur who had no idea what he is doing. It also cost me quite a bit more to pay for his two useless tests and for the additional repair when the leak was not where he said it was.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $300.00
- Company Response
Dear Mr B,
We regret that our service did not meet your expectations. You had previously given us a perfect rating for our salt generator installation and we did find two separate leaks in your pool. When you called us regarding your leak you mentioned that you were certain that the pool was losing water at the same rate with the pump on or off. This diagnosis was incorrect and misled us in our search for the source of water loss in your pool. As we strive to improve our service we have learned a valuable lesson to only come to conclusions from professional diagnosis. We tried our best to save you money and in the end you hired a different contractor to fix the leak. The other contractor charged you double what we quoted you for not doing any leak detection work and doing "extra digging". We would have gladly included any additional digging without any extra charges had you hired us to perform the repair. We wish you the best of luck with your pool and advise that you hire a pool contractor to close your pool in the future to avoid costly repairs.
regards,
Alex Patlashenko
Swim Clean Pool Service