Nice, friendly service until you commit to a purchase. Then they treat you like an annoyance.
Last summer I bought an above-ground pool for my new house. I shopped around a little but since I live in Canton, I like to support local businesses. So I decided to buy my pool from Viscount. Bad idea.
Our salesman was also some sort of manager at the store, and always seemed like he would rather be doing anything else than helping me. He was friendly enough up front, before we signed the contract for the pool + install + extras ($4,500 total). He called me back to follow up a few times while we were trying to make up our minds.
Once my pen hit that paper though, things changed. All of a sudden, I couldn't get him to return my phone calls. When I showed up at the store, he alternated between being overly patronizing and smugly arrogant toward me. Only after I signed everything was it revealed that parts of my pool were on backorder, and would be 2 weeks. I mean 3 weeks. I mean 5 weeks. Then what? I get to wait for the installer. The installer they use is so booked that you need to schedule weeks in advance, but he won't give you a date until you actually have all of the pool pieces sitting in your yard.
I'm not knocking the installer, he did a great job, and the install was the best thing about the whole experience. But the staff at Viscount were less than helpful during the process, and downright rude at times. There's nothing like spending almost $5,000 at a local business and being told "there's nothing I can do about that" or "I can't help you with that." For example, the plastic base of the filter motor arrived broken. I called them to get a new one. Their response? "That part doesn't really matter, you could try to glue it." Their follow up? "We can't order just that one piece, we'd have to order a whole new filter."
I'm addition, after the pool was delivered but before it was installed, I learned that the survey of my property was incorrect - there is apparently an invisible easement across the back of my yard, right where I intended to put the pool. My only choice now was to install right basically right next to my house, which was a horrible spot. I called the manager and explained the situation to him, and I even offered to pay up to a 20% restocking fee, which on a $3,600 pool amounted to $720 to have them essentially drop off some boxes in my yard and then pick them up again.
However, he was much more interested in trying to "upsell" much more expensive half-buried installations which would void the warranty of my pool than he was in working to resolve the problem; that I now had no good spot to put this thing. 20% for a restocking fee is above the retail standard and I felt that $720 to drop these parts off and then pick them up and cancel the order was not an unreasonable request. But because I had signed a contract at the store, he preferred to pretend that there was absolutely nothing that could be done in the matter and refused to let me return the pool and pay him $720 for his troubles.
Well, congratulations, Viscount. You made the sale at any cost. You win. It doesn't matter that I will never set foot in that store again - or that I tell my friends and family and everyone else that will listen what a lousy experience it was dealing with you. You made the sale, and in the end that's all that matters. read more
