Isabel & Sam in Richmond Hill

A “0” rating, we did absolutely nothing right? If the service was so bad why did this homeowner continue with us throughout the entire summer & even asked us to close the pool? From the onset, our service foreman, John, attended to this house in Bayview Hill, he had assessed the pool, equipment & surroundings & had discussed with the homeowner the procedures that were required to put the pool in proper working condition. The homeowner went on to tell John that he was unable to find a service company that could take care of this pool to his standards throughout the past many years, had specifically named approximately 5 of the most long established premier pool companies in the city & hoped that we would be the first.

John had informed me that this back yard is completely overgrown and un-kept. The vegetation has been left unchecked and more closely resembles a “jungle”. The interlock decking was old, un-level & had dirt & weeds growing up between the cracks. The pool needed to be drained, acid washed, re-plastered or at the very least painted. The stone coping was dislodged with few intact areas of grout where required. The tile work was in need of repair, or more appropriately replacement. The homeowner went on emphasize that only his wife swims in it & at that perhaps once or twice per year and that is why he neglected it & furthermore did not want to spend any money on it other than to nurse it along. He only approved the bare necessity of an acid wash & a pump as it too was in disrepair. It is most certainly true that there had existed an algae problem with the pool specifically in two main areas. This was a direct result from the garden soil running beneath the stone coping after any precipitation, bringing with it enough organic matter to cause more than just algae. This was brought to the homeowners’ attention & he was told that this problem would persist until the proper & needed reparation to the stone coping had been done. He was given a price & we were told that it was simply not in the budget. Despite the conditions that we had to endure, we had continued on faithfully every week throughout the summer with each visit requiring more than twice the effort to clean this pool. The client was advised in June that we would need to double the rate to continue on as the procedures took over twice the time.

Upon presentation of the final bill at the end of the season (as was customary with our regular clients), the homeowner basically offered half & then decided that it was a good time to complain about the service he had received for the past four months. At this point we had decided to fire the client, however, as a measure of goodwill in the send off we had told the homeowner that if he contacted us in the springtime, we would extend our cost price on the two items which he wanted replaced, I believe was the filter dial valve & the heater, both of which had been disconnected. He was told that we were not interested in doing any more work for him & that he could find someone else to install the items. We felt that he did not deserve this offer of value but opted to take the high road anyway.

We did not receive any further correspondence from this client until the following spring when this review was posted. In his review he noted that we had not contacted him, nor fixed the said items, the reality was that there was never a promise or otherwise from us to do anymore work there and he was to call us if he wanted the discounted items In retrospect we wish now that we did not extend that offer of value and instead just moved on cleanly in the fall time. No good deed goes unpunished.