Wood's Pools & Waterfalls

To be completely fair, Dave Woods is one of the nicest people I have ever met. He was very friendly, very personable and when you were actually able to get a hold of him, he was very pleasant to talk to. That being said, we had more trouble with getting a hold of him, getting him to return calls and it was near impossible to get him to give you any real dates or expectations on when the work would be completed. We had no expectation that the work would be done right away when we signed the contract in April because it was the beginning of the busy season, but it was 9 weeks from the time we signed the contract until the work was actually completed and ended up costing us considerably more than anticipated. We tried to get a clear answer on whether it would cost an additional amount for sandblasting, to which we were told, it is rarely required, it is just in the contract in case. Well long story short it was sandblasted and no one even mentioned it to us until the day the pool was filling and an additional over $1500 check was requested. We had said from the beginning that we were not in a huge hurry, that we weren't a family that needed to have it done by memorial day, which would have been 5 weeks away, but that we DID have a big party on the 4th of July and would need it done by then. We were told that would be no problem at all. Parts of the job were done over the following 8 weeks, but it would be a week or two at a time between when we would see any contractors at all. 6 days before our party on July 4th, I called and tried to get Dave, without any luck. When I finally heard back from him, he said he would definitely schedule it for Monday the 2nd. He showed up unannounced on the 1st (which was another thing that bothered us a little, never know when someone would just drop by) and told us it would be the 3rd instead, which meant that we had cut it so close we would be required to buy water instead of being able to fill the pool with our well as we had been told we would be able to do to save some money. That was an additional $800 that we thought we would not have to spend. Bottom line...although we like Dave as a person, communication with him was practically non-existant. My husband felt on several occasions he had to get very loud and pushy to get a response from Dave, and whether it was actually necessary or not, he pushed my husband to the point that he felt it was. The work looks good, but there are places that need repaired and we are still waiting to get that done. He did send an employee with NO notice at all out to do the repairs (which were all under water), but we refused to drain the pool at that time, so now we are waiting again. I have no doubt that it will be handled and will look good when it is done, it is just the non communication and the constant not know that was the biggest problem for us. All of my other contractors, and there have been many here, have always been reachable on their cell phone (at least to leave a message). Dave does not give out his number, his number is blocked when he calls and the only way to communicate with him is to call the store and leave a message and wait for him to call you, or an employee to call you and relay a message. That is the reason we most likely would not use them again or recommend him to others. We got estimates that were lower for the same work, the additional costs at the end put him way over 2 of our other estimates, and it took way longer than any other company quotes us, but we liked him as a person so we went with him.