Complaint Review: Nationwide Pools - Pompano Beach Florida

Our Experience with Nationwide Pools I would like to start by saying that I am a real customer of Nation Wide Pools(NWP) and this is an honest account of our experience with this company. I am a wife and mother of three and hired NWP to build a pool in our backyard in 2010. My husband and I were so utterly disappointed and, honestly, shocked by the way we were treated by NWP that I had to put in this complaint. I can only hope that someone will read this and be spared the stress and agony that we endured. I am providing my email address so please feel free to contact me and I will be happy to relate our story to you personally. We are very reasonable people and do not expect a perfect project but we do expect that the contractor should be trustworthy, and be able to adequately manage the job. Unfortunately, we only experienced the opposite with NWP. I think what has made this company successful is that they have a really slick sales pitch. We were sold by James Stanton. His pitch was great. He seemed very professional and we really thought we were signing with one of the best companies out there. Unfortunately, after we paid our initial deposit, it was all downhill from there. Please read below for further details. - Scams & Lies Creating the pool plans - James Stanton o Our contract included a pool with 84 linear feet. We decided on a design with James but when we got the plans from the engineer, they showed a pool which was 75 linear feet. This was listed in small print at the side of the plans. Luckily my husband noticed this before we approved the plans. When confronted with this short fall, James enlarged the pool but then claimed that the larger pool would result in $840 in additional deck. At the quoted $6.50/sq ft for deck, this would mean an additional 130 sq ft of deck. This seemed unrealistic and when we compared the before and after plans from James we could only measure a possible 10 or so extra square feet. We asked James to please come to our house and help explain where he was getting an additional 130 square feet of deck. He replied that he was too busy to make it to our house but would be gracious enough to cut the additional cost in half to $420. When we said that we would still like to know where this additional cost was coming from, he retracted the entire amount and said he would remove the extra cost, as if out of the goodness of his heart. But, this is not the end. After this interaction which was so obviously caught him in an attempt to scam extra money out of us, he delivered the plans to me via email and I could not believe it when the space which lists the linear feet of the pool was completely blank. I had to ask him again to revise the plans and send them to me with the linear feet documented. After this, we called the manger (Keith) and explained the whole interaction. We expected that, after this, NWP would at least try to make the rest of the project go smoothly but this was just the beginning. - - Scams & Lies - Mosaics o I went to the office to pick out our pavers and tile. While I was there, I was interested in mosaics for the pool. I wanted to get a price sheet for the mosaics but Stephanie told me that I would have to tell her which ones I was interested in and she would find out the price. So, I circled several mosaics in the brochure and she wrote down the price of each one. I was surprised at how expensive they were but didnt think much else about it. A week or so later, both me and my husband came back into the office. While we were there, he started asking about the price of the mosaics. I was listening in shock when each price she quoted him was exactly 50% less than the prices she quoted me. When I confronted her with this, she made up a story that the mosaic company was going out of business and so everything was on sale. But, what do you know, after she realized her mistake, every mosaic she quoted after that was magically the bloated price she originally gave me. I also called the mosaic company after this and they told me they were not going out of business. After this, we realized that NWP really could not be trusted and used lies and scams to try to squeeze out extra money from their customers. We would have to be on guard from here on out. - Scams & Lies Extra Gravel o Before the hole was dug for the pool, our project manager (John) had us sign a separate, building contract. In the contract, there is a clause that states that we may be charged up to $500 for additional gravel if needed. When we asked about this, John made it seem like this rarely ever happens so not to worry about it. Of course, once the hole was dug, John told us we needed extra gravel. My husband called gravel companies to research the price of gravel and found that you could get an entire truck load for $250. That amount would fill the entire pool half way up. And, let me tell you, I never saw a gravel truck come to the house and I never saw extra gravel being laid down in the hole. Then, with no further explanation, NWP had the audacity to send us a bill for this gravel for $750.00! This is more than even their contract price or the price John had told us. The entire thing was just one more scam to try to get more money out of us. We refused to pay this bill, demanding they show us receipts for evidence of this extra gravel and we havent heard about this since. - Poor management of materials causes lengthy delays - pavers o Once the pool was formed with the water tile and coping, we were told the next step was the construct the deck. Were told the pavers were not in and we would have to wait two weeks. After these two weeks, we were told it would take another two weeks. After this also did not happen, we called the owner (Keith) and found that the pavers had never been ordered. Why? I have no idea. The only reason I could think of is that they had a cash flow problem. We were told by Keith that they would order them now. Another week went by and we still had no pavers. We called Keith again and the story was now that the paver company had a mechanical breakdown. We waited two more weeks for pavers to be delivered. We were so happy when the pavers were finally delivered, but then were dumbfounded to see that they are NOT what we ordered.We were told it would take another 4 weeks to correct the order. After this, at least they did compensate by offering us pavers from a different company which could be delivered sooner. o - More poor management of materials Mosaics and Step Tile o After the pavers had been installed, we called up to check on the status of some mosaics and step tile we had ordered eight weeks prior. Two days went by without any response. Stephanie was called again and we asked her if she had the mosaics. She had not ordered them and didnt even remember what we wanted. We confirmed the order of the mosaics eight weeks prior and if we had not called to make sure they were in, Im sure they would have never been ordered. I asked her if she had the tile as well. She said she did have the tile in her possession but later, as the job continued to be delayed, we called the office and the reason they gave us was that they were waiting on the tile to be delivered. So, Stephanies response was just another lie like so many others. And then, can you believe it, when they finally installed the step tile, it was the wrong tile! They had to rip it out and replace it with the tile that we ordered. - More Scams & Poor management. - Fence o The original contract included an iron fence around the yard. We did this through NWP because they told us they would handle the arrangements of the fence as part of the whole project. Once the pool was formed and we were told completion was a few weeks away, we called the fence company to make sure that they were set up to install the fence. At this point we knew we could not trust NWP to manage anything properly and we had to be on top of every step in the process. Of course, the fence company was not aware of the status of our pool. No one from NWP had called them to set up the timeline for the fence. Also, when the fence company came out, their estimate for the price of the fence was 2x what was quoted in our packaged quote from NWP. This was not the fault of the fence company, who were trustworthy and very professional, but NWP had incorrectly measured the dimensions for the fence and neglected city requirements which under estimated the price. So, they under-bided the fence in the original contract to make the overall price of the package look competitive and then left it up to the fence company to pick up the pieces. - A few more things o These things are the major disappointments we experienced. There were many other smaller incidences like many missed deadlines, broken commitments, mismanagement, etc. They rarely returned phone calls. Their original pitch included promises to clean up the yard at every step in the building process. They never cleaned up the yard once. I had trash in my yard for 6 months. Someone forged my husbands signature on a county permit document. The electrical permit took weeks to get approved and currently, the fuse box trips every time the pump goes on. We are waiting for them to send out an electrician to fix this. My husband and I got to the point where we just expected things to go wrong for every step. Also, they will try to use the wife for an easy out. Whenever they had some bad news to deliver, or wanted us to agree to something, they would call me even if my husband specifically asked them to call him. They obviously thought they thought they could manipulate me easier, which was pretty insulting. I still cant believe this company who seemed so professional in the beginning ended up being so untrustworthy and handling our job so poorly from start to finish. The whole process got me to the point where I could hardly handle it. We signed the contract with NWP on Feb 10th and the pool was not ready until August. I felt so bad for the kids too, they would ask every week how much longer and we had to give them bad news over and over again. o Please do not be convinced by a slick sales pitch and spare yourself months of stress with Nationwide Pools.