For starters, it's hard to write this as my experience with the company started off really good. Hired Trilogy in the spring of 2021 to completely overhaul a 20 year old pool. Removed the plaster and went with Pebble-Tech coating plus new tiles at the water line, and new surface tile on the section between the in-ground spa and the pool. Brand new gas pool heater, limited new piping and other parts. Almost $25K in work. The pool looked great at completion, so we hired Trilogy for the weekly pool maintenance.
The first 7-8 months were good. A high turn-over of technicians, but supposedly not uncommon in this industry. In general the guys that came out were knowledgeable about the system and how to maintain everything.
Then a few little issues started. A lot of efflorescence started building up on the grout of the water line tiles and nearly all of the small tiles between the spa and pool. Grout started failing in this section as well. I pointed it out to the technicians weekly to figure out why, and they all stated it was a common thing with pools, and there wasn't really anything they could do about it (more on this later).
In July of 2022 we bought a rental property with a pool and hired Trilogy again, this time to add a pool heater and perform the weekly maintenance. It was a Hayward heating system ($6K plus another $2K+ for new electrical and labor to install it). Paid the 50% deposit and waited on the unit. Once installed, it didn't work. I noticed the temp of the pool wasn't changing. I notified Trilogy only to be told to give it a few days. I checked it daily for 3-4 days straight and it was often cooler than the previous day. Meanwhile, Trilogy kept asking for the balance of payment. I explained I would pay the balance when the brand new pool heater was working, but not before. When they finally came out they confirmed it wasn't heating, just as I had been saying for nearly a week. However, they claimed it was now a "warranty repair issue", and said I would need to work through the Hayward warranty dept to fix it...and asked again for full payment. Again, I stated I had paid for a brand new heater and what they installed was a broken heater, and I wasn't paying the balance until my new unit worked or was replaced.
The Hayward warranty contractor came out, determined it was a bad compressor (on a brand new unit) and it would need to be replaced. After much back and worth with Trilogy on next steps, Hayward released a new heater to replace the original. Great! A few days later the new unit was in, and after giving it one week to make sure this unit was heating properly, I paid the balance as promised. Then, 2 days after I made payment of the balance, I received an email from Trilogy stating they were dropping us as a client. What? Why? The email stated they couldn't keep up with our communication standards? The only communication we asked for was that they follow the contract as written. It was weird.
I said fine, we'll find someone else to maintenance the pools, but we wanted the tiles and grout fixed still because at this point the grout was failing, chipping out and several small tiles had fallen out. Took pictures and sent to Trilogy, but all I got back was an email stating their workmanship/labor warranty is only 1 year, so there was nothing they could do. In studying up on the issue, Trilogy used the wrong grout (without built in sealer - plenty of articles on this issue) which leads to efflorescence and grout failure. They may also have rushed the install process and not allowed the mortar to properly dry before installing the tile.
This was a vendor I had paid over $30K on 2 projects plus weekly maintenance for a little over 1 year. They used the wrong material and/or improper installation, then failed to address the issue while within the 1 year warranty period. Then they dropped us immediately after we challenged them on it. No discussion, no conversation, just an email dropping us and saying we were out of luck on an issue they created. LOOK ELSEWHERE! read more