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.

Terrible.  Beware do NOT hire this company!

I have to send water samples to review the chemicals. The results a very sadly. This is a salt pool system Free available chlorine. 0 Total available chlorine 0 Salt 2100 Cyanuric Acid 20 Total Alkalinity. 490 Phosphates. 500 I just want to tell every vary, take care who are working in your house and more when you have children

What a scam. we used them a few times, but their last visit took over two weeks for them to show up, then the bill included costs higher then what the technician had said. Parts that I could buy for $8 he charge $32. My wife called to work with Tim, he just refused to budge even thought he charged for extra hours as well. We are sending a check, but at a reduced amount. We are willing to go to court.  It is a shame because a couple of his pool technicians are good.

I hired Sparkle and kept hoping they would improve after becoming familiar with my pool.  They did not improve and I will not hire them again.

They opened our pool in May.  It took them over 3 trips to complete and they left no reasons as to why it was taking so long.  They also replaced an automatic pool cleaner mechanism without our authorization.  We had disconnected the automatic pool cleaner but they never took the time to ask.  The replacement part was over $400 and was a 2008 part.  A new replacement part is $200 at Terry's Pools on Michigan Road.  They also replaced a overstretched gasket on the pool cleaner which was creating an air leak and causing the pool pump to not draw adequately.  I diagnosed this myself without their help and I'm sure saved myself the cost of a "new pump".  They were to clean the cover for $300++ and it still remains dirty to this day.  Tim promised to come out and redo the cover cleaning but nothing.  They left trash on the property.  They also have charged my credit card numerous times without my authorization and continued to do so after I canceled the weekly "service".  The show stopper is I took over my chemicals in late May and they claim they were coming out and adding chemicals.  I find it hard to believe that I can shock a pool on Thursday night and by Friday they come out and dump another batch of shock in but no one sees them on the premises and that was a day that our family was home the entire day.  If they were doing the chemicals then why did I have to add 50 lbs of soda ash over a 4 week period to get my pH in order and add 1.5 gallons of muriatic acid to get the alkalinity in check.  Calls to Tim and his angelic customer support team have not led to any action other than receiving a final bill for $400+.This company is a joke and I will do anything I can to steer people away from them.

I have more I could share but I'm tired of typing and the more I think about this encounter the more frustrated I get.   

My first mistake was not following Angieslist recommendations for this company, but I thought I'd give them a try. The owner, Tim, spent time and explained everything to me. He listened and was professional. The Service tech, another Tim, was extremely knowledgeable and professional as well. I originally called them out to inspect my pool for a leak. They charged $150 for the trip out and that would be credited if I elected to have them do the work. I figured that would be fine with me. My pool cover motor decided to stop working over the winter, so I needed them to replace it. Also my pool pump also decided to stop working. Tim looked at the pool light and said he was nearly 100% positive that the leak was the pool light, because the waterline from the winter settled there. He said that he didn't need to pressure check the lines, because that was how confident he was. It all sounded good to me, so I agreed that they fix the automatic pool cover, and he said that they would fix the automatic pool cover shut off switch. In addition to the light, I had them replace the pool pump and filter. - I was pretty happy, because I was very confident in Tim's experience and abilities. The day work was to begin, to my surprise, someone else showed up. This guy screwed nearly everything up that he touched! First he reused some of my old PVC tubes. He didn't glue the pvc together properly, resulting in leaks in about 1/2 of the tubes he glued. He wired the pump incorrectly to 220v instead of 110, and used duct tape to hold the wire to the pump! He couldn't figure out how to remove the old light from the pool, so my wife and I spent a Saturday afternoon digging up the wire so he could complete the replacement. Also he said he fixed the automatic stop on the pool cover, but it didn't work and I broke it the first time I opened the pool cover. I spoke with Tim, the owner, and he said things would get taken care of. I believe it took 3-4 trips out. But the leaks were sill in the PVC, the pool stop didn't work after repeated attempts to fix. Guess what, the pool still leaked!!!! They never actually checked to see if my leak was fixed. Recall that this was the very thing I called them out to do. After a number of weeks went by w/o them showing up. I called another company and they found the leak. It was located around the light they replaced!

I bought a home with a pool already installed and hired Sparkle to put in a new heater and open the pool. When they came to open the pool they informed me that I needed a new liner. Well, the liner took several weeks to arrive and when they came to install it, big surprise, it did not fit properly. They sent it back to the manufacturer and installed it a few weeks later. I thought it looked good initially but within days a big wrinkle formed. When I contacted Sparkle's owner, he referred me to the manufacturer and offered no assistance. Throughout the process of dealing with the owner I found him unprofessional and unlikeable. It makes me sick to think about how much money I paid to a lousy company. I will never use Sparkle again.

Sparkle told us we needed to spend approx $250 in parts for the pool to get it up and running, and approx 900 in parts (or just buy a new pump they suggested) to get the spa up and running. At this point I decided to get a second opinion .. and found out neither one needed ANY PARTS at all. The other contractor got the thing up and running right away... and were alot more professional along the way. I should have trusted the poor or average ratings on Angies List before hiring Sparkle but I had a friend who uses them, and has had good luck without incident. A local pool company ALSO warned about Sparkle, saying the the 'gas chlorine' they use will tear up pools over time. Of course Sparkle denied this, but the pool company had nothing to gain by telling me this. Paid Sparkle $150 for their time to estimate the problems (even though there turned out to be no problems at all) - and for cleanings and chemicals performed, but will not be using them EVER again.

They performed our closing last fall so we chose them to reopen. Mechanical parts were put together but they did not reset valves and switch box to their appropriate settings. In 24h our pool water level dropped by half. They came out the next week but didnt let us know they had been out. When we called to check if they were coming out they stated they had bee out and found no problem with what they had done. Turns out the switch that drains the pool was left open. Had another company come out to find that. We also asked that the in floor plugs that were put in for winterization be removed so the in floor system would work. The water was too cold for them to reach in and remove the plugs-per the company so they wished to wait until the water was warmer. Well the system wasnt circulating in part because the plugs were still in. After insisting someone finish the job, they sent 2 young men out who had to borrow my tools to do the job.

I think we have used them about 12 or 13 years. Their service has been great. I don't have to call them. They come out once a week, on a certain day and test the chemicals and add whatever needs to be added.

Called Sparkle to install new heater. Paid $1000 down. They used a UNQUALIFIED sub-contractor that they got from a "manpower" work source. His glue job looked like something my 3 year old nephew did. Not to mention it LEAKED everywhere and washed out all of our landscaping. We called the owner to come and inspect the work and he said, "yea, that looks pretty bad" but he still expected us to pay for the lousy work, even though we told him we were going to have to call another company to fix what his company screwed up. We paid this louse and still ended up paying another pool company to come and re-plumb the heater. This company is TERRIBLE -- DO NOT USE! Submitting report to BBB as well.

Keeping our outdoor inground pool crystal clear. We like that you can pick and choose the different services such as water testing weekly and you supply the chemicals, or testing and they supply the chemicals, added on vacuums as needed or on a regular basis, etc. Very affordable, also in their opening and closing fees. Very responsive despite the high volume in the spring.

THEY ARE CHARGING ME TO CLEAN THE POOL AND TO PUT THE CHEMICALS IN AT A DIFFERENT TIME, THEN TO CLEAN THE SPA, AND PUT THE CHEMICALS IN IT, AT A DIFFERENT TIME. THEY ARE REALLY DOUBLE DIPPING, BECAUSE THEY SHOULD DO THAT ON THE SAME VISIT. THEY'VE PUT TOO MANY CHEMICALS IN MY POOL AND SPA, WHICH HAS MADE THE WATER TOXIC, IT HAS MADE THE WALLS DIRTY AND STICKY... I HAD AN INDEPENDENT GUY COME AND TEST THE WATER AND HE SAID IT WAS VERY TOXIC AND NOT TO GET IN IT BECAUSE IT WOULD BE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. I AM VERY UNHAPPY WITH THEIR OVERCHARGING AND THEIR POOR SERVICE. THEY HAVE BEEN CHARGING ME FOR SERVICE WHICH HAS NOT BEEN PERFORMED AND I WOULDN'T HAVE THE PROBLEMS WITH THE WATER TOXICITY AND FILTERS IF THEY HAD BEEN DOING WHAT THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO DO. I HAVE A BRAND NEW HEATER AND FILTERS, WHICH HAVE ALREADY BEEN REPLACED BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T SERVICING IT PROPERLY.

WE USED SPARKLE FOR TWO SUMMERS WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS. THIS SUMMER THEIR WEEKLY CHEMICAL TREATMENTS WERE AWFUL. THE MANAGEMENT WAS NICE ENOUGH, BUT AFTER SEVERAL ATTEMPTS TO GET THEM TO CORRECT THE PROBLEMS, THEY JUST COULDN'T DO IT AND WE STOPPED USING THEM.

EVERY YEAR, THE GASSES FROM CHLORINATING THE POOL WOULD ESCAPE AND KILL SOME OF MY YARD. EVERY YEAR, THEY WOULD APOLOGIZE AND PROMISE IT WOULDN'T HAPPEN AGAIN - YET EACH YEAR IT WOULD. THE LAST TIME, THEY KILLED ABOUT ONE QUARTER OF MY PLANTS AND TREES. I HAD TO TAKE THEM TO COURT TO GET THEM TO PAY FOR IT. WE WON.

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR, EXCELLENT SERVICE, BUT HIGHER PRICES

WE NEVER KNEW IF HE WAS ACTUALLY CLEANING THE POOL BECAUSE HE WOULD FREQUENTLY FORGET TO LEAVE A CARD TELLING US WHAT HAD BEEN DONE. HE OPENED THE POOL FOR US AND DID A TERRIBLE JOB. ORIGINALLY TOLD US IT WOULD COST $280 AND THEN CHARGED $150 EXTRA, WITH LITTLE EXPLANATION.

CALLED TO OPEN POOL.COMPANY DID NOT BALANCE PH, HAD NOT CHECKED MECHANICAL SYSTEM. DAUGHTER HAD SEVERE REACTION TO WATER. COMPANY SENT THREATENING COLLECTION LETTERS TO MEMBER AND THREATENED LIEN ON HOME. MEMBER WENT THROUGH BBB ARBITRATION: & WON!

NOT VERY GOOD

DO EVERYTHING FOR YOU. GREAT!