Let's start at the very beginning. Steve came out to look at our property and give us a quote for a pool. We clicked pretty well with him and after a couple of drawing revisions, signed a contract on March 30, 2019. We were told to expect roughly 6-8 weeks for permits and another 6-8 for the build. In our minds, we should have a pool in 16 weeks, give or take a week or 2 because we know how these things go...
Late in May, Steve emailed us saying that they were finalizing the permitting. June 1 we got our HOA approval. June 10, we email Steve to check on our status, as we hadn't heard anything from Pool Perfection outside of the May 28 email. He advised that we were on the calendar for June 23 for yard stripping and June 27 for pool shot, as long as there were no hiccups with permits. Ok....This is week 13, going into week 14.
On June 26, we send another email, as nothing had been done. He advises that we're now on the calendar for July 7 for yard stripping and July 11 for concrete. Granted, there was a good bit of rain, however there were days on days on days with no rain or activity.
Emailed on July 27, asking for a status update as nothing at all has happened and we had not heard a single peep - they advised that they were waiting on our permit to come sometime that week. Steve had said on May 28 that they were finalizing permitting. Um, what?! This is now week 18. We should be swimming by this point, not waiting on a permit. Other people I had talked to in the surrounding neighborhoods had pools done from permit to final inspection in 12 weeks. 18 weeks before even having a permit is absolutely ridiculous. The ball got dropped somewhere, but no one was going to take responsibility for it.
The week of July 30, while we were out of town, they started stripping the yard. Week 18. Finally! Should have a finished pool in the next 6 weeks. Ha.
The communication from this point on laughable. There was hardly any at all whatsoever - I got more calls about other people's project updates than I did for ours. We didn't really know who our project manager was for a while, but it didn't matter because he ended up getting fired mid-way through September. The only time we heard much of anything from anyone at Pool Perfection was when the next draw was due. And god forbid if we weren't home when they came knocking - they even chased me down at work to pick up a check. Once we'd pay, we wouldn't hear much or see much work happening for a while...this lovely pattern continued throughout the remainder of the project.
The next project manager we had was the owner, as it turns out. We had to walk him through the project, show him things that hadn't yet been done, etc. He seemed as frustrated with the poor management of the project as we were, which at the time seemed helpful, but things still took time to get completed. Not his fault, I'm sure he had inherited quite a few projects when they fired the other guy. But still...it shouldn't have ever been allowed to get to this point.
On October 18, we had our final inspection.
29 WEEKS.
Granted, there was a good bit of rain this summer, but good grief. There were no apologies or explanations for the delays, and no responsibility taken for the mismanagement of our project.
Outside of the timeline, the pool is beautiful and seemingly well done. Unfortunately, our kids didn't get to enjoy it this summer before school started, as we had hoped, but cest la vie. Thankfully, they like cold water....
Another note worth mentioning: I received several phone calls from various team members at Pool Perfection that were not for our project - they had my phone number on someone else's project paperwork somehow, so beware.
In summary, if you like *not* knowing the status of your project, enjoy being chased down for more $, lack of accountability/responsibility, and you have unlimited patience, then maybe Pool Perfection is right for you. But we would take our nearly $50K elsewhere if we had to start all over. read more