ehorn
08-06-2006, 01:03 PM
Okay well welcome to what I'm calling my pool hell right now. Our pool contractor which has been taking their sweet a** time doing any work has decided to go out of business. Now not because they did ****ty work, or because they didn’t have enough business, it’s because the owner is too depressed and has no motivation to work.
I can accurately estimate they have between $500k - $1.5 million in open contracts to build pools at the time being. Now why anyone would want to walk away from that kind of business baffles me. But anyways we’re now going on over four months of construction and they haven’t even shot the concrete yet. We had some employees show up on Monday morning asking if they could go ahead and get the permits changed into my name so they could get past inspections because their license is currently suspended due to one of the complaints against them. That’s when I was told that the owner would like to finish our pool but plans to go out of business after that. Well unfortunately I don’t take too kindly to having someone finish my pool who is going to go out of business and currently does not have a contractors license to do work, plus they currently have no bond.
I have opened a complaint with the State of Arizona Registrar of Contractors (ROC) for failure to complete the pool and failure to pay a sub-contractor. Oh yeah we also got a preliminary notice of lien on the house because they didn’t pay their steel contractor. The state inspector will be here Aug 14th to inspect the pool and from that they can write a work order demanding the contractor finish the pool. It is also the first step to their legal process and getting any damages from the recovery fund they have when a contractor goes out of business.
There is a link to the current pictures of the pool below. You can see that we have a nice 3 food wide trench in the backyard. That’s the one the dogs have been jumping over since March, and us too. I built a bridge over it a few weeks ago because it’s been getting wider as the walls have been collapsing. In the other pictures you can see that there is getting to be some significant collapse of dirt in the pool. Most of it is minor but the major one at the curve by the pool light is going to suck. Not sure how they are going to fix that yet.
http://www.greyhounds2go.org/pool/
For now I actually sent a certified letter to Sun Pools of a notice of cancellation of pool contract. Basically I want to make sure they stop working, I really don’t want them to do anything else. I’ve already talked with two other pool companies, got an estimate from one which will cost $2,800 more to finish than we have plus still need to pay the steel people if Sun Pools never does. That’s where the ROC recovery fund comes into play, but that can take up to four to six months to get money out of the fund. There is a cap on the fund of $30k per customer and a $200k max given out. We put in our complaint fairly early so hopefully there will be sufficient funds left.
So that’s our hell for right now. I’m also thinking about going to talk to some lawyers who specialize in construction law. So anyways this whole thing is beyond frustrating and just makes me angry. If the owner ever gets off her a** to even call me on the phone I plan on giving her a piece of my mind.
So any additional input anyone would have would be appreciated but I'm mainly posting this to help vent some fustration and to show you that just because it's a company thats been around for 20 years doesn't mean they are going to fold on you.
Eric in Tucson, AZ
I can accurately estimate they have between $500k - $1.5 million in open contracts to build pools at the time being. Now why anyone would want to walk away from that kind of business baffles me. But anyways we’re now going on over four months of construction and they haven’t even shot the concrete yet. We had some employees show up on Monday morning asking if they could go ahead and get the permits changed into my name so they could get past inspections because their license is currently suspended due to one of the complaints against them. That’s when I was told that the owner would like to finish our pool but plans to go out of business after that. Well unfortunately I don’t take too kindly to having someone finish my pool who is going to go out of business and currently does not have a contractors license to do work, plus they currently have no bond.
I have opened a complaint with the State of Arizona Registrar of Contractors (ROC) for failure to complete the pool and failure to pay a sub-contractor. Oh yeah we also got a preliminary notice of lien on the house because they didn’t pay their steel contractor. The state inspector will be here Aug 14th to inspect the pool and from that they can write a work order demanding the contractor finish the pool. It is also the first step to their legal process and getting any damages from the recovery fund they have when a contractor goes out of business.
There is a link to the current pictures of the pool below. You can see that we have a nice 3 food wide trench in the backyard. That’s the one the dogs have been jumping over since March, and us too. I built a bridge over it a few weeks ago because it’s been getting wider as the walls have been collapsing. In the other pictures you can see that there is getting to be some significant collapse of dirt in the pool. Most of it is minor but the major one at the curve by the pool light is going to suck. Not sure how they are going to fix that yet.
http://www.greyhounds2go.org/pool/
For now I actually sent a certified letter to Sun Pools of a notice of cancellation of pool contract. Basically I want to make sure they stop working, I really don’t want them to do anything else. I’ve already talked with two other pool companies, got an estimate from one which will cost $2,800 more to finish than we have plus still need to pay the steel people if Sun Pools never does. That’s where the ROC recovery fund comes into play, but that can take up to four to six months to get money out of the fund. There is a cap on the fund of $30k per customer and a $200k max given out. We put in our complaint fairly early so hopefully there will be sufficient funds left.
So that’s our hell for right now. I’m also thinking about going to talk to some lawyers who specialize in construction law. So anyways this whole thing is beyond frustrating and just makes me angry. If the owner ever gets off her a** to even call me on the phone I plan on giving her a piece of my mind.
So any additional input anyone would have would be appreciated but I'm mainly posting this to help vent some fustration and to show you that just because it's a company thats been around for 20 years doesn't mean they are going to fold on you.
Eric in Tucson, AZ