Sparkle Pool Service

The liner pulled away from the coping and they had to insert several retention clips. The liner is stretched and pulled away from the intersectio of the pool wall and floor. There are rocks under the liner on a vermiculite bottom. The liner either does my fit or it was not installed correctly. I heated the pool to 85 degrees for 3 weeks and the liner Still is not flush at the intersections. The walls are galvinized steel and had rust areas from leaks in the previous liner. The they sanded and treated one area. Three additional areas were not sanded or treated and they installed the liner over rusted areas. There was rust at the coping joints. They said they sanded them but when two of the joint clips fell off, the exposed joints were rusted and not primed or painted. They glued the clips on over unpainted untreated rust. The joint clips are metal with sharp edges that protrude past the bottom of the coping exposing a swimmer, especially children, to getting injured. The owner told me all of these issues is "standard practice" and he would not do anything to correct the problems.

First, when I hired them, they had a price to open the pool as $195. Basically what they did was, they came and turned on my filter, which was already on - I had done that. They didn't dump any chemicals into the pool or anything like that, let alone vacuum it and get it ready. When I call somebody to open my pool, I think, when it's done, I can swim. I called the lady at Sparkle Pool and she said, "Well, we have an A and a B opening. The A opening is a mechanical opening, where we just come and start your filter out." I said, "What, do you pull my cartridges and clean them up from the previous year?" She said, "No." I said, "To me, that's mechanical too. So you basically came and you flipped those light switch thing to start my filter?" She said, "Well, no, it's more complicated than that. We have to take the plugs out." There is two plugs, where water normally comes out, when the filter is running. You keep the plugs in to keep water from back washing into the filter once you closed it down. So you take those two plugs out. I normally do it, but, I'm disabled and I can't do it any more. I've done it for years. It's a 10 minute job, what they did. I said, "Okay. Fine." Then she says, "We have a B opening, which is what you're asking for, to vacuum the pool and do all that." I said, "Yeah. How much is that?" She says, "Well, that's $295." I said, "Okay. Well, all I know is I can't do it anymore myself. So I need my pool open and ready to swim in." I remodeled my house because I'm selling it. So I needed the pool to look good. So, they came out to do that. Normally when you vacuum the pool, you vacuum it and it goes through the filter and when you're done, you take the cartridges out of the filter and hose them all off and put them back in or you can use another method where you bypass the filter and when you're vacuuming the pool, the water is just blowing out onto the ground. So any leaves or anything, getting on the filter, they're just blown out on to the ground. By the time you're done, the pool is a foot low on water. So you have to turn off the filter because otherwise the skimmer is going to suck air and you will get a big air bubble in your filter system and that's a pain in the butt. Anyway, I filled it back up and it took me forever. The pool wasn't done being vacuumed. They just stopped. Because the pool was going up on water, they didn't want to keep going. They told my daughter, "Well, put the hose in and fill it back up," and didn't tell whether they would be back to finish it or not. So, anyway, I filled the pool back up with water and then, turned the filter back on. Well, it wouldn't start back up. The motor ran but no pumping. So, I probably spent two hours out there, priming the pump with buckets of water, before it finally started back up. I had to vacuum the rest of the pool and get it done. As I'm handicapped it's really hard to do. Finally, I finished it up and then, I got their bill of $295 and I'm thinking, "I did most of the work. I'll send them like $250 and tell them I took $45 off for my work. They certainly didn't do the job, in my mind.