When we signed on to get our pool done a few years ago we had stipulated a particular finish for the pool that was selected out of the number of variants shown to us in the sample book. As luck would have it I was not in attendance on the day the company actually did the work, and when I turned up the following day to take a look at the pool discovered they had given us the wrong color! My wife got hold of the rep, who started talking out of both sides of his mouth and brazenly told her "so what's the big deal? Once the pool's filled you can't tell the difference anyway!" Yes folks, he seriously said that! So I guess as far as White Sands is concerned anything the customer selects is basically just a moot point and it's up to White Sands to decide if they'll accommodate the customer's wishes or not. The guy literally reduced my wife to tears with his brusque attitude, and only backed down when I emailed later with an angry response to his behavior.
So back to square one, and White Sands returned to layer on ANOTHER coat of the pool finish - I thought they'd grind off the previous one they'd saddled us with because it is actually quite a thick layer, but no, they just put the new one over it. So fine, we ended up getting the color we wanted, but with one layer on top of the other they ended up making the pool sides look like they're bulging out a bit, and the recess for the underwater pool light is so tight that it won't house properly - within a week of their finished the job the light simply fell out and landed on the bottom of the pool. Try as I might, working with a snorkel and mask, I could never get the light to go back properly into the wall, ended up getting longer bolts, and left it sticking out in ugly fashion.
A few months later a small hole appeared at the bottom of the shallow end, and the tenant who was living there flatly denied having anything to do with it. It was a neat round hole, and I suspected one of her kids had speared the cleaning pole into the pool, though she claimed one of her kids had jumped in, hit the bottom with his heel, and the surface had crumbled away. I leaned towards the pole theory, regardless of which I contacted White Sands to ask what they could do about it - they sent out someone who applied an underwater patch (meaning they didn't drain out the pool, just applied some other kind of compound that wasn't like the original finish) and even though I thought it marred what had been our nice new finish we decided to live with it.
Unfortunately, over time the surface began to crumble away around the patch, to a point where it eventually became apparent that if we didn't do something about it more and more of the new surface would get compromised - what had started out as a hole about the size of a dollar coin ended up about the size of a bread plate. The way the surface kept crumbling away - I could easily pick away at the edges with my fingernail when I jumped into the pool with my snorkel to inspect it - left me worried just how strong the original bonding agent was.
We contacted White Sands a month or so ago and asked them to sort the situation out for us, including grinding out the light recess to make it sit better. This time they drained the pool out, but gave us a patch of supposedly matching material that clearly doesn't blend in. As for the light? It fell out again with days - clearly they did nothing to fix the hole.
That they did this follow-up work without charge is fine - but what's the point if it's poorly done? Besides which they were at least responsible for fixing up the light recess.
Overall our experience with White Sands has not been a happy one. Just unprofessional and lackadaisical in their follow-up work. read more