Wet Feet Pools - Service, Repair, Supply

This is a very hard review to write because I liked the two fellows in the crew who actually did the work and believe they did their best to make us happy. I think the vast majority of problems stemmed from company management mistakes. For example, our indoor water feature is six feet in diameter and over a foot deep, and management knew this but to drain this large water feature the crew was given the wrong tools for the job - a tiny water vacuum instead of the company larger water vacuum. This meant the crew could only vacuum a small amount of water out of the indoor feature in each attempt, and in between attempts had to carry the water-filled vacuum outside to dump the water, awkwardly repeated this water vacuum process MULTIPLE times, dirty water sloshing and spilling on the floor each time. The crew told me the company had a larger vacuum far better for the job but they were given only the smaller vacuum. The crew only had one towel to mop up the mess from all the sloshing water spilled during the vacuuming process. It took quite a long time. So much for the promised quick and clean vacuum of water from the Indoor water feature! After the water feature was finally drained and cleaned and refilled, the crew tried finishing the install of the new fountain pump. The new pump was so noisy the crew didn't like it anymore than I did, and my husband came home, heard the pump from down the driveway as the crew was putting away their tools, and my husband asked the crew what the terrible noise was. When my husband found out what the noise was, he said it was unacceptable and the crew agreed. The crew apologized, saying that was the pump handed to them by management. The crew decided to leave the noisy pump in place while they researched a quieter one, which VERY MUCH to their credit they found quickly. On the crew's second trip to the house, the crew uninstalled the noisy pump and installed the quieter one, and it was quiet, but despite the height promised on the new pump box, the quiet pump had the wrong horse power and was too weak to power the fountain. The crew then immediately same day took the fountain pump (unfortunately along with some of my pre-existing copper plumbing which caused leaks later) to the store with them, and came back while it was dark outside and installed a larger version of the quiet pump, which was also quiet. FYI, I approved to pay the difference in store purchase cost of the larger quiet pump and the original pump, so we were already over the original bid. Anyway, the crew didn't stabilize the pump (it just hung on the pipes) and by the next day it was leaking from where they had disconnected the existing copper plumbing, and elsewhere, so they had to come out AGAIN, and to make a long story short, the pump install kept leaking (even from the pump itself!) and to the crew's credit they came out several times to try to fix it. Every time they came out it was more uncomfortable for me and was chewing through my time waiting for them to arrive, etc. The company expressed frustration that it was taking too much time (which actually was their own fault for not bringing the right vacuum, and then also for not installing the right pump twice). In addition, the crew seemed to feel pressure perhaps because they were trying their best but so much kept going wrong. Even the third pump itself started leaking which was frustrating all around, and the crew's solution unfortunately was to remove adjustment functionality from the pump to stop that leak. I found out later the pump leaking problem was because of misplacement of an o ring. At one point, the manager said to me, and quot;we can't know how noisy a pump is.and quot; I responded, and quot;we hired you because you are the experts.and quot; The manager replied, and quot;we ARE the experts,and quot; and I said, and quot;then you should know based on your experience which pumps are the quiet ones and which ones to avoid.and quot;. In any event, after a generally uncomfortable exchange, the company manager/owner offered to send someone yet again, this time to braise the fittings to get it done right, but my husband and I opted instead to hire our plumber and have him finish the job, which our plumber did at a cost of another 200. Our plumber had to undo what they did, plus do some things he thought were advisable, so our project went waaaay over budget, took waaaay more time for them AND FOR US, but again, the crew was nice for most of it.
If the crew had been given the right pool vacuum and the right pump, the repeated leaks still would have been a problem, so a little training would go a long way. I learned from our plumber what they did wrong, and so I can see a little training in plumbing would have helped them. For example, the o ring from the pump was misplaced and the wrong pvc to copper joining was done, etc. I want to emphasize for their management - you've got two willing crew members there - give them the right tools and just a little training and they're perfect, I want to stress that the company was willing to keep trying, but we gave up on the company. It is to their credit that they wanted the customer to be happy. Effort was not lacking here.
At the end of this job, I don't think the company was happy because of the extra time, the crew because they were trying hard without a happy end result, or us because it took so much more of our time and money. I will say that IF the third pump install had been successful then this would have been a far more positive review, applauding their willingness to try so hard with the right end result. Unfortunately, the third pump install was not successful, and so then the sloshing water from the fountain clean up and the extra time and money all start weighing in. It's a shame, the crew were nice fellows and their heart was in the right place, but management put the wrong tools in their hands.

I started getting some algae so I'm not using them any more. The price was okay. The workers were good.

This is a new house for us and the pool is a completely different system from what we were familiar with and is much more complicated. We got a very fast appointment. Ryan from Wet Feet seemed very knowledgable and was able to answer all kinds of questions for us about all aspects of our system. He fixed spa problem on the first appointment and needed to order parts and return to complete repairs to slide and fountain. He stood me up on the next appoinment due to an non-work related emergency but I am going to give him a pass on that because when I called him later about a question he showed up immediately and sorted it out. Ryan is very nice to deal with and the office staff is very pleasant as well.