Continuing on... (please start with my initial review before this)
My wife didn't like some of the stone work at the edge of the pool. She felt the pieces looked unnatural due to their shape and felt the colors didn't match well. She sent some photos to Dave, and he had the stones pulled up and redone, making her very happy.
Another "issue" we had was with a set of stairs I wanted. Back when they came to paint the ground, I realized that I needed a set of stairs on one end of the pool decking down to the ground where another set of stairs were. I told Randy that I wanted stairs there, and he said no problem. Well, one day I got home from work, and the pool deck had been poured. I thought it was odd that no stairs were poured at the same time, so I asked Dave and Randy. Essentially, they had forgot. For a few weeks, I kept reminding them that I needed stairs there, and Randy would say they would figure something out. I told him I would pay to have them added since they weren't in the original contract, but in the end, I never even could get a quote. The moral of this is to make sure you get such changes in writing. I really don't want to hire someone else to do it, because there are pipes in that area, and if there were a problem, I could see the stair guy saying he didn't crack the pipe, it was already there, and Randy saying it was my contractor who cracked the pipe. So, now I just don't have stairs where I really wanted some.
Continuing on with my trash yard complaint, it really took way too long to haul off both the construction debris as well as the accumulated garbage. Additionally, I had to carefully go around the yard to remove broken bottles that were left following the only cleanup.
Another problem was the fact that they dumped a lot of dirt on the neighbor's property next door. I told them it must be leveled and all, but they didn't level it all just most of it. I'm going to have to pay someone else to come in with a box blade to fix it. Yeah, I should have Picasso do it, but sometimes you just want to have it end.
After reading so many other problems about pool installations online, I'm thinking that mine went pretty well overall. This is why I'd say I'd use them again and gave them the 4 stars (3.8).
Randy, if you are reading this, I have one other piece of advise for you. When the job is done, take the time to ask how the overall experience was and if there were things that you might have done differently. Honestly, I didn't feel comfortable calling you and "griping", so here I am. I'm guessing that a lot of your business comes from word of mouth, if that is the case, you might want to take the time for a post installation interview instead of "I need my final check. Bye."
In the end, our pool is beautiful and I didn't lose any hair or sleep in the process. read more
