A-1 Pool Service Inc

We have found A 1 Pool to be very professional and responsive.

For the past 5 years I have used A-1 Pool Service to provide year round maintenance (chemical balance, cleaning, replacing pool light bulbs, filters, etc). During the summer I rent out our house for 10 weeks. The pool gets a very heavy use since there has never been a vacant week and maintaining good pool service (twice weekly visits) is essential. Whenever I email or call A-i Policy service, I ALWAYS get a prompt reply--nights and weekends, included. The fee for their service is reasonable and during the off-season periods pool service is decreased to once weekly to keep costs under control. Overall, I have been very pleased with their service!

Professional service provided. We have had the pool serviced twice a week for the past three years. Whenever there is an issue Dawn is right on it. Both Techs Jessie and Eric/Erik are top notch. Paul has personally came to the house twice to offer is opinion on the pool efficiency and consult regarding a total pool resurfacing. We highly recommend and will continue with them.

The experience we've had and all the other negative reviews online now make sense. Paul and Dawn the owners are the only people we've dealt with. He commits to something, then she lies about why it wasn't done or claims the tech was here even though six security cameras show us they weren't. They charge us over $300 a month for our pool to turn green on a regular basis. When they don't show up and I complain, they send another tech that they then have the nerve to charge us extra for. We've caught their techs coming and leaving without touching the pool floor or equipment. They said last week the pool would be drained and thoroughly cleaned for our guests this weekend. I came back yesterday and it was disgusting. She guaranteed they would clean it yesterday and no one showed up. The owners are lying incompetent con artists and people around here deserve to know that they should not use them.

If you go with them, be ready to have your communications "stovepiped'. The communication is poor to non-existent at times. A1 does not provide the customer with the ability to dial the Owner directly, you must go through the switchboard, and the owner will get back to you- when he is available, be prepared to wait and play phone tag. They had a service person on site who was great at cleaning, however, he could not or refused to learn my pool's system, even after I sent the manuals to A1. Since the Tech did not learn the basics of the system, I requested they put a new tech on site, and the owner said they would. I visited my house 2 weeks later, and A1 had the same tech present who I asked not be on site. They told me that the did not have the personnel to replace him. Did they communicate that to me. Nope, that was the end for me. I tried my best to leave the door open for future business if they hired new staff and change process, brother they closed that door. I would not hire them again, and do not recommend them.

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They provide twice a week service for our property for all year.  Our property gets extremely messy due to a lot of trees in our back yard and our technicians always come without fail and take as long as they need to clean everything wonderfully.  If there is ever a problem they dispatch a repair tech the very next day and it is repaired.  We live out of town and have never come in to our property with any problem with the pool.  Very dependable cleaning & repair services.

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The entire process of choosing & ordering the spa & having delivered was seamless.  Paul & Dawn were fabulous to work with me as I am an out of town homeowner with a rental property and we communicated via telephone and email many times to help make my choices.

The rental company is very pleased that we will now have a new spa for our rental guests to use.  A-1 has explained to me how to use the spa & provided directions for me to post inside the home & for the rental company to provide for renters.

This could have been a very long and drawn out process, but I encountered no problems whatsoever.  Emails and telephone calls were always returned, they let me know choices via websites and work was completed very quickly with their staff.

I am very pleased and have been using this company for a very long time, and will continue to use them.  They are the only service provider that my rental company (both current and past rental company) recommend for service in this area. 

Here is a summary of a few of the MANY issues we've had with A-1:
1.  The most awful customer service your can imagine.   We've only ever dealt with one person at A1 from a customer service standpoint and it was always the same.
2. We've had several large charges pop up on our bills over the years for work that was not authorized and repairs that were not needed or approved. Each time we asked about these we were met with rudeness by Dawn.  We've made it clear that they were not to perform any repairs to our pool without our prior approval and yet they've continued to do it.  Until recently we've paid all of the bills for the work that was not authorized.
2. They backwashed a huge pile of sand into our newly landscaped area and ruined it although there were many appropriate and convenient places to backwash.  When Dawn was contacted about this she made no effort to remedy the situation and pretty much said it wasn't her problem.
3. We had renters who paid us to heat the pool and  A-1 was supposed to turn on the pool heater a few days prior to their arrival. When the renters arrived the pool was cold and the heater was not on.  I contacted Dawn and she insisted that the pool heater was turned on and it was not their problem.  I even had our renters take pictures of all the heating equipment that proved the heater was not on and Dawn still told me it was not her problem.  On several occasions when we have been at the house, A1 has turned our pool heater off without permission when we have been the ones to turn it on.  So, A-1 may have turned it on as Dawn stated but someone from her company turned it off before the renters arrived because the heater is locked and A-1 employees were the only ones who had access.  We had to give our renters a refund and Dawn still made us pay for them to turn the heater on even though it wasn't on for the renters.  Dawn did not care at all what problems A-1 created for us or our renters.
4. Last spring we had another situation where the pool was not heated for a renter.  I immediately contacted A-1 and the person who answered said Dawn wasn't there and she couldn't help me.  This escalated into a big deal because I had unhappy guests at my house who paid to have the pool heated and the pool was cold.  I decided to take matters into my own hands and had a tech from the heating company dispatched who was able to easily fix the issue for me.    The heating company also identified at this time that the heater was never turned on.  Again, I had pictures taken which clearly showed that they heater was not on. The heater is locked and the only way it could have been turned on or off was by A-1.
 In the meantime, A1 took it upon themselves to send someone from their company out and charged me even though I told them I would handle it on my own when the person on the phone at A1 told me she couldn't help.   When the charges popped up for this, i contacted Dawn who insisted that we pay them because they sent someone out. The fact that they did not turn the heater on, told me that they could not help, and that I had to get the pool heater fixed myself meant nothing to her and she was extremely argumentative.  Once again, we paid another bill for something that was not requested or helpful.
5.  The final straw was this summer when I asked A1 to check the light in our pool because someone said it wasn't working.  A1 never got back to me on this and when I asked about it again they said the light was fine and there was nothing wrong with it.   I was very clear when I asked Dawn about the light that I did not want any repairs done without our approval, I just wanted to know if anything was wrong.  Low and behold the following month I have a HUGE charge on my pool bill for the light being replaced.  When I contacted Dawn about this she said it was her mistake and if we didn't want it then they could come back and undo all the work and put the non-functioning one back in.    Last I heard there was nothing wrong with my light, why would you need to replace it if there was nothing wrong? And seriously A1, that's your response when you make a mistake? To tell the customer it was your mistake and you will come back out and put a supposedly non-function light back in the pool? Your "customer" solution is to spend more time "undoing" your mistake to leave the customer in a worse position?  That defies all logic and does not help anyone.  
Based on the information I received from A1 I do not believe there was anything wrong with the light in the first place and I think this is all a coverup for the erroneous charges.  I made it very clear that I would not be paying for the work that was not authorized which was their mistake and that I was switching pool companies.  I received another email about payment for this work and I again made it clear that I would not be paying for this.  Dawn's response to this was to tell me that the account would be sent to collections if I did not pay it.  She also offered again to spend additional labor to undo the work that they did.  I declined, and told her that I do not trust them and do not want them on my property.  As an alternative, I let her know if they wanted their light back that I would have my current pool company remove it and send it to them as long as A-1 paid for the labor upfront.  She responded that she would be sending this to collections.
I am not worried about the collections process at all as I can't imagine how we could be expected to pay for work that was NOT AUTHORIZED.  However, I did decide to write a review on google so that I could share my repeated problems so that others would have this information when they needed to select a pool company.  
I promptly received an email from Dawn after I wrote a review on Google stating that "since I wrote a negative review" they can not resolve this issue and have no choice other than to send it to collections.  What?  You have no choice and can't resolve the issue? This makes absolutely no sense since she has made zero attempts to resolve this over the last few months and had already stated that she was sending it to collections.  I have been bullied into paying for charges that were not previously authorized and for mistakes that A-1 has made but I will not be bullied into staying silent over this.  It's important for me to share an accurate and honest view on my experiences with A1.  That's what reviews are for and I feel that people who are considering using A1 should know how they treat their customers.
Lastly, I was astonished by the response that Dawn posted to my Google review.  In this response she stated that we have safety and flood issues with our house and they replaced the pool light due to safety concerns.   This is 100% NOT ACCURATE.  It is a fabrication after the fact to try to negate the facts in the review.  When I contacted Dawn about the bill for the light she stated that this was their mistake.   Don't you think that if there was a safety issue that it would have been included somewhere in the explanation of why work was done that was not authorized?   We have been working with A1 for years and the FIRST time that I have ever heard anything about safety and flood issues was today in reading her "public" response on Google.   I am shocked that she would fabricate something like this after the fact, but I guess it shouldn't surprise me given my other interactions.
We own several homes and this is the first time that we've encountered a situation like this.  My co-owner has three engineering degrees including a PhD in engineering.  He specializes in Safety Engineering and we are very diligent about any potential safety issues surrounding our house.