Signature Pools & Landscapes

Hands down the worst experience with a contractor we’ve ever had. Eric Watanabe, owner of Signature Landscape and Pools is dishonest, unorganized and could care less about you. The highlights are: -He intentionally underbids then gives you change orders for the dozens of things he doesn’t include -Left our pool totally unsafe for our family to use and refused to complete the work to make it safe -Didn’t pay his subs (but paid himself), gave them our personal information so they could threaten to put a lien on our home -His secretary, Monica Nava is rude, sarcastic, inept and entitled -He’s incapable of sticking to any kind of timeline he gives you -He’s unorganized, causing delays in the project -Charged us for services not rendered which we had to fight him on later -Eric is a BS artist that spends much of his time bragging about how great he is, but he is not a man of values -Don’t take our word for it, search this company AND Majestic Pools and Landscapes and believe the reviews The Details, buckle up, it’s a lot…. We hired Eric Watanabe and Signature Landscape and Pools to renovate our entire yard including our pool, hardscape, and landscaping. Eric took a sizable sum of money and didn’t break ground on the project for about two more months. His contract was nebulous, was missing about 50% of the work needed to keep the bid low and entice us to sign it. He claimed the only items not included were about four lines of highlighted expenses. He knew the amounts of these expenses, but omitted them again to likel keep his bid low. After four months of slow work, we realized he was running about 60% over budget and had not included many items discussed, some on the plans. He would submit change orders and blamed his egregious spending of our money on a gas line repair, which was a FRACTION of the expenses he racked up in change orders. After 4 budget meetings, we were never able to get a full accounting of the cost to finish the project. He would show up unprepared, but all smiles, with items and costs “off the top of his head” instead of a full list of total costs. He always seemed more interested in socializing, bragging about how amazing is and telling stories than getting the job done. Eric was also hyper focused on his underground work and boasted “if someone dug this up in 50 years they’d say what an amazing job” it was. He was consistently unprepared/unorganized like a kid doing his homework five minutes before class, showing up at the last second for decisions to be made, giving us hand drawn sketches instead of CADs. We asked him for landscaping plans for months and he said, “oh, no that’s later.” When later arrived and we were supposed to be planting, he showed up with a hand drawn plotting of trees and nothing else. The contract stated he would provide CAD drawings that we never received, just more last minute hand sketched plans. When we asked for a refund of the thousands he charged for the CAD we never received, his rude secretary, Monica Nava, said this: “Is interesting that other clients haven’t said anything knowing [their employee] had [been ill]” inferring that the extra money was going to his medical which was not true. While we have the deepest sympathy for their employee, it doesn’t excuse them charging us for services not rendered -and essentially admitting they were ripping off all the rest of their clients the same way! And let’s talk about Monica for a minute. She was rude, sarcastic, and ignored our requests for copies of the contract, invoices and other items. But when they wanted payment, she would email and text us multiple times per day for immediate pick up. Eric has no regard for the hard earned money of his clients and basically expects a blank check. Because he was a terrible communicator and didn’t tell us we needed to finalize our materials/finishes, he rushed us to paint our pergola (it was going to rain) and then said if the color wasn’t right that he could just repaint it - at our expense. Uh, thanks. Why would we want to pay him twice?? About three months into the project, he realized the spa would need to be replumbed to create the same design as the pool. He said he would, “have to figure that out.” He never did and now they don’t match. Honestly, we wouldn’t have wanted to pay to replumb the spa, but why did it take him 3 ½ months, once the pool was already redesigned and concrete laid, to figure that out? He just threw his hands in the air, like, “oh well.” Because he was so behind timeline and so over the budget, we ended up having to fire him from half the project, agreeing to finish the pool and hardscape with him. Eric was absent the entire last two weeks of the project and we never saw him again. He sent us an email claiming he was retiring (we know he has two other projects in the permitting phase, he’s not retiring). He did not finish the last piece of agreed upon work, leaving our pool totally unsafe for our family to swim in and refused to come back to fix it to the “commercial grade anti-slip” he promised. We are still trying to get our pool to work properly due to other issues that were working prior to Eric. We issued him partial payments for final bills because he owed us money for items/services not used (thousands for lights we never saw, etc). Instead of paying his subs, he paid himself, then gave his subs our personal contact information so they could threaten us with a lien on our property. We ended up hiring an attorney to resolve the issue. Throughout this process, Eric and Monica lied and continued to try to drag the situation on instead of being cooperative. Through all this, never once did Eric apologize for anything, ever. He blamed everything and everyone else. Avoid this man. At all costs. He has no values, no honor and sees you as a mark to be exploited. Don’t just take our bad experience as an example of this terrible company, do a google search and you’ll see others have had similar experiences.

performance was great in a timely manner , and any situations that accure were solved promply I'm still using them to date
very happy and continue to recommend them .
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Owner Eric Watanabe had initial consultation with me.  He was professional and knowledgeable.  Once project was started it proceeded as plan and was completed on time and within my established budget.  They did not come to me with change orders trying to up the price.  Results on my water bill was an immediate 35% savings, which today, one year later is still running at 25% less than last year.

Neighbors are constantly complimenting me on the appearance of my new front yard.

Excellent.  Job started and ended when they said it would. End result is beautiful.  I get many compliments from my neighbors and passersby.

I have been working with Eric on various projects for over 10 years. Never have I met someone who understands every aspect of design and construction in extraordinary detail. Always professional, friendly and extremely knowledgeable. Always providing practical, functional and innovative solutions to any and all landscape situations. This project was no exception. My client and I received quality service from the entire Signature team, from Monica in the office, to Eric as the project manager and Kevin in the field as project foreman. All along the way, my client and I were made aware of project progress, payment milestones and any design issues that came up which required our attention/ review. It would be unreasonable to think construction didn't come with its challenges, but to have a company like Signature that looks for solutions and not problems is truly unique.

After reading the previous review of Signature Pools and Landscapes, I felt compelled to also add a review to share my horrible experience.  Like the other reviewer, I can't believe its come to this as I have never written a negative review on here or other websites like Yelp.
This job started on November of 2012 and "completed" in June of 2014.  We were promised a completed project in Summer of 2013 but it finished in the summer of 2014.  WE completed the project ourselves as Eric Watanabe walked away and we never heard from him again. 
We engaged the owner, Eric Watanabe, to design and execute a plan to transform our backyard in November of 2012.  He couldn't have been more professional, engaged, and attentive to the idea of getting a job from us.  He came on a referral from a friend so I felt good about it.  Oddly, it took four months from our first meeting until execution of contract (all while piling up "design fees" despite making almost zero changes to the initial plan.)   Lots of smiles and personal communication during this time - he's real good at that.  LOTS OF SMILES.  And also lots of promises about his professionalism and detail oriented work.  We were explicitly promised that we would be swimming by the beginning of August 2013.  We signed the contract and things immediately ground to a halt.   We rarely saw Eric for several months.  Clearing of the yard and excavation went forward at a snails pace.  We figured some magical things would be happening soon since he never mentioned anything about being behind schedule.  In fact he never really showed up for weeks at a time.  Not that it mattered at first since little was being done.   During this time some common themes started to materialize: 
1. Communication.   Eric would rarely respond to emails or phone calls (in the 16 agonizing months of this project he literally never once answered his phone - always voice mail).  Most likely a reply would come via email from a woman in his office who has major communication/language problems.  A very direct and specific question would be answered by this woman in a vague and broken English reply.  I would then email Eric directly with the request that HE call or email me back - sometimes he would and sometimes he wouldn't.   The lack of professionalism with communication would cause almost every other business to lose all of their customers.  I started feeling embarrassed for him.
2. Execution of work.  The biggest downfall of this company is that Eric doesn't actually do any work for his own company.  He never once raised his hand to provide any labor.  Every single part of this job (except the design) was done by sub contractors.  None of these subcontractors were directly supervised by Eric.  After a few mistakes were made, I found myself coming home each day to monitor that days problems and to highlight the issues that happened.  He said he would take care of the problems and the next day the workers would continue where they left off and not address the problem - only causing them more work later when it had to be re-done.  I would talk to them and they said they were never told anything so they just proceeded.   In fact, most sub-contractors complained about the work that was left for them by the previous sub and that Eric was asking them to do work that they weren't contracted for.  I got tired of this routine and basically started forcing Eric to come by every Thursday for a "meeting" that was really just my way to make sure he actually came to see things for himself.
3. Scheduling:  completely incompetent when it comes to scheduling and managing this project.  It was as if this was the first time he had ever done a job like this before.  Subs repeatedly told me they should have done their part of the job before other parts were complete.  As stated earlier - this project went NINE months over what he promised us.  My favorite was when the electrician walked off the job right in front of me and said he wouldn't return until somebody did their job correctly so he could do his.  Sadly, I completely understood.
4. $$$.  The budget of the project seemed reasonable after we narrowed down what we needed rather than "wanted".  I did a good job of locking in prices on individual items so that overages were guaranteed to be kept to a minimum.  Despite that, Eric still did his Classic Contractor best to try and nickel and dime us to generate more income for his failing business.  It became evident that he had severe cash flow problems which were going to compromise completion.  He was constantly begging for money to move on to the next part.  Fortunately, I did not give this man huge percentages of upfront money as he likely would have walked away sooner than he did.  He was slow to do anything except pick up the check.  The only thing that was reliable about this job is that when payment was due, he would have the check picked up IMMEDIATELY.
5. Excuses.  This man had excuses for EVERYTHING.  Not once did he accept any blame for anything.  Like the previous review, he would always show up with his big smile as if nothing was wrong.  In July he said we would be swimming by August.  In August he said we'd be swimming in September.  That charade continued to the end.  Each time he would create new excuses.  I once had the strange misfortune of being behind him on the freeway going in a direction opposite of my house.   When pressed on some of the shoddy workmanship, he would constantly blame one of the subs for the problem - as if he wasn't responsible for generally supervising their work.  
6. Quality of work.  Some things bad, some things good.  Had I not supervised the daily construction, this would have been a disaster, and I'm afraid I would have uncovered some of the mistakes well after the fact.  The pool malfunctions and other issues that came up had to be fixed by us out of pocket as Eric disappeared before full completion of the project.   His favorite phrase to use was "when this job site gets dug up by future generations the people will say "wow, this guy really knew what he was doing".  Yeah, good one Eric.
You might think that we were difficult to work with or that we made constant change orders.  The beautiful fact is almost nothing was changed by us from the original design.  We wanted nothing more than to move this project along.  I would repeatedly ask "when do we pick out plants", "when do we pick out colors", etc. etc.  He would constantly say, "oh yeah, we'll get to that later".  I'd say "why?".  He would always just leave it open ended so when it was actually time to make choices, everybody was scrambling.   After he ran out of other excuses he then tried to blame us over a paver color issue.  As a joke, I told him I would give him a courtesy window of an extra month that he could blame us for if he could account for the other 8 months that the project went over. 
This review has turned into a vent for me.  After all this time I still have bitter feelings and this review is only a small sample of the pain and suffering my family endured over this over hyped/over promised project.  In retrospect, the only thing we should have hired this company for was the design.  That seems to be the one thing he can do competently.   Everything else?  Complete F.

Hard to believe that I am writing one of those horrible reviews, but this company has been so negligent and provided such sub standard work, I feel it is the only way to warn others before they hire SPL (Signature Pools and Landscape).
We are building a new home. It is a large undertaking and we thought we had hired very reputable companies to handle the many facets of a project like ours. 
Let me first say that mistakes happen on a big job. We understand this. Our contractor has made mistakes in building our house but always immediately rectified any situation as it arose. No harm, no foul.

Eric (head of SPL) put on a great show when we met with him. Polite, charming, and he appeared very professional.

As work began and errors continued to crop up through the process, we chose to give him the benefit of the doubt. When we realized he had placed the pool 1 foot closer to our property line than was indicated on the plan, after the engineer advised against it and we all agreed not to do it, he said he thought we'd be okay with it since 4 weeks prior we mentioned considering it - so he just decided to do it! Without ever asking us! We had to let it slide as the pool shell was already almost complete.
When we noticed that workers were framing the spa in the wrong position (by about 2 1/2 feet) we called it to his attention immediately. We had a meeting. Showed him the plans. Many smiles and nodding from Eric. No problem.
Next day we found his workers continuing to build the spa in the wrong place! We told them to stop work and get Eric to come out.
Eric shows up eventually. More smiles. Spa framing is eventually re-done in correct position. Thankful we caught the error, but our confidence in SPL is now very shaky.
7 days later we see the spa has only been plumbed for 6 jets instead of the 8 called for on our plan and the shotcrete is already done!  We point this out to Eric.
More smiles. Says they will fix them. 
No work happens for 4 weeks. Then instead of demo-ing the top of the spa and repositioning the jets correctly, their plumbers drill holes in the walls and cut the re-barb support structure and use 6-7 elbows for each jet to jerry-rig them into the positions that will allow for the 2 additional jets to be put in. We sense this is not the right way to fix their mistake.

We get 2 other companies out to evaluate the work as we are now doubting the integrity of the work. The other companies say it is absolutely not correct and that the spa should be demo-ed down to the plumbing and re-done correctly. They shake their heads and say they are sorry we have been taken advantage of. 
We call Eric to meet and give him the opportunity to agree to fix the spa the right way. He begins by arguing that there were 8 jets installed from the beginning!?! Really??? I tell him I have pictures and videos to show otherwise. (which I emailed to him after the meeting to prove that is not the case- no response  from him)  He says they look good to him and we need to get reports from other licensed pool contractors that the jets are not done right, and proceeds to deny all the other mistakes his company has made throughout the process. We begin to realize he is in total denial.

At the end of the day, we conclude we cannot trust anything he says. We don't even know if the pool was built per code as they NEVER provided any permits, structural reports, etc.
They finally sent us copies when we threatened to take legal action.
They offered no compensation to fix the spa correctly and refused to re-do the spa correctly themselves. 
In the end, we are out over $5,000 to fix SPL's mistakes. Maybe they don't do every job in this manner, but the fact that they refused to even acknowledge their bad work (or rectify it once it was called to Eric's attention) suggests this may be the way they do business.