FWIW we talked to both Anthony & Sylvan and Blue Haven as well (didn't go with either, we ended up going with a large local firm).

Anthony and Sylvan was a little more expensive and was probably a fallback but we weren't thrilled that the sales guy had only been with the company for a few months and completely missed the fact that we'd have to build a retaining wall (which affected both the price and layout). They did give him good training and he had the highest tech tools out of everyone who came. They were clean in my area for BBB and other than general building hassles the people I know who used them locally to DC were happy. They were the only other company besides the one we went with that offered an in-floor cleaning system.

Blue Haven was downright scary. They did come in the cheapest but thhe sales guy who came out had also been working with them only for a couple of months, also missed the retaining wall and his only training was the fact that he owned a pool. They are usually a franchise shop so make sure you find out the specifics on your local franchise (ours was horrible with the BBB).

The builder we finally ended up going with was somewhat old fashioned (used an architectural scale and pencil for all of his drawings) but he was the construction manager previously for the same company and had been there for 20 years. He was the only one to shoot elevations of the yard and figure out that we had to drop 5' from the patio to the pool deck in a pretty short distance. They also had the in floor cleaning syetem and were willing to do everything else we wanted (though he still gives me major grief about my insistance they put in a pool pilot total control instead of the mineral springs system they try to push) - at least he's willing to do it even though he's way over charging me for it. They were clean on the BBB and were the largest builder in the area behind the nationals (they also did the commercial pools in my current and past neighborhood).

Just make sure when you're comparing prices you try to do an apples to apples on the individual items (flooring sf price, PebbleTec price, etc) since the quotes usually have very different things in them. I swear this is worse than the construction process when we bought our house - and I thought I was done with the hassles ;-)