Presidential Pools Inc

Description of Work: New pool construction

Description of Work: As a preface for those who don’t have the time to read this entire review, let me condense things and just strongly suggest that you take your business to anyone other than Presidential Pools, they are grossly incompetent of managing timelines and projects. Let me start by saying that we did our due diligence in preparing for a pool and preparing to select a builder. I spent time researching pool sizes, positioning and bid over ten builders in Tucson. All companies were grossly incompetent, some failed to bid the job all together, some got lost on the way to the house and just never showed up, most took so long to generate the proposal (over 1 month) that I disqualified them, but I selected Presidential because they appeared to be the most competent. One quick note - the sales manager assigned to my job, Carlo Colombino, was professional, courteous and helpful throughout the entire process when the rest of the team was rude and dismissive. I started communicating with Presidential in May and signed the contract for the pool on July 1st after nearly two months of pushing to get a competitive contract with the correct dimensions and features for the pool. From July 1st, it took them nearly 30 days to even get started on excavation. There was no communication through this process, there was no call or email to introduce me to project managers or inform me what the expected timelines would be. This is the common theme of my experience with Presidential, YOU WILL RECEIVE NO COMMUNICATION AND WILL BE LEFT TO PROJECT MANAGE YOURSELF. They finally broke ground in late July but failed to communicate where to drive equipment and which equipment to bring which resulted in delays and concerns about permits. Once that was resolved, they proceeded to dig the hole closer to my house than desired and closer than the plan called for. Because of my work travel schedule, I unfortunately did not notice this until after it was complete. I was also pressured to have the excavators dig and build a separate wash on my property to contain rain during monsoon season, this wasn’t suggested or discussed by Presidential during the planning of the pool and cost an extra $1,000. I cannot emphasize enough how disconnected communication was throughout this process. Once the hole was dug, things went silent again and the only way I could gather information was by sending daily emails to anyone and everyone I had communicated with at Presidential, essentially managing the project myself. Once the time came to lay pool decking, the subcontractor and several people from Presidential came out to inform me that there were elevation issues with the hole they dug and the way they planned the elevations. They informed me that they would not be able to run the new decking flush to my existing decking in the backyard and the new decking would sit 3 inches higher than the existing decking. Obviously, this is ridiculous to even consider so I asked the subcontractor to please leave my property. Presidential incorrectly planned and dug the hole so they asked this subcontractor to further cover their error by adjusting elevations and planes and asking for even more money (over $10,000). I invested more of my own time by going out and bidding the concrete decking to other subcontractors who could correctly fix their errors and lay decking that would not present trip hazards / look terrible. Presidential credited me roughly $3,500 back for going out and contracting my own decking, which is completely inadequate. I am writing this on October 25th and the pool has just been finished. It looks bad because of the sloping of the decking; the pool sits roughly 2-3 inches high and all the decking slopes up to accommodate it and I feel like I worked harder than this entire company to get the job finished. In retrospect, I should have requested refund or stopped the job during excavation when it was clear that the company was unable to properly manage the project.