Poolsupplies.com/leisure living.. consumer warning.

[badutahboy]

I hate to have to write something like this, and I'll try to avoid being totally inflammatory, but I thought this needed to be said.

Last march, I ordered an atlantic 18x33 above ground pool from poolsupplies.com (a subsidiary of leisure living). It was a good price, and they offered a lot of niceties that I really liked, which convinced me to buy from them...

I received my pool at the end of march, with the only instructions for receiving the shipment being to count the boxes, which I did, and came out with the right number.... turns out the liner they sent me was the wrong one, so I called in and they offered me a $40 credit to keep the one they sent, which I accepted.

A month or so later, I got to putting up the pool and all went well.. I got the wall up, and was getting ready to install the liner, only to find out I didn't have the skimmer.

I called poolsupplies to resolve this issue, and ended up on hold for over 4 hours, numerous transfers and a whole bunch of HORRIBLE customer service just trying to get them to send me the skimmer I ordered. Eventually, the issue got resolved, but they refused to overnight the skimmer to me, in spite of the fact that the pool wall was already standing and totally at the mercy of the elements.

(Note, I know now that I could have proceeded with the installation and filled the pool up to 2-3" below the skimmer opening, but I didn't know that at the time, and NOBODY gave me that info, despite the fact that I told my story to at least 8 different customer service agents and the sales manager)

During the week it took to ship/receive the skimmer, we had a major windstorm, which collapsed the pool wall, doing significant damage to it. I called into poolsupplies again, and again spent several hours trying to resolve the situation, ultimately getting nowhere. The wall was significantly damaged and the slotted tubes which sit on top of the wall were nearly all destroyed.. I should mention that during both of these situations, I was transferred to my salesman's phone line, as well as the sales manager's phone line NUMEROUS times without answer, and neither ever returned a voice message, despite the fact that I left at least 10 messages for them over the course of 3 days.

Finally, I emailed their sales, customer service, and corporate offices with a detailed complaint. I got nothing in response other than a completely offtopic response to my email, detailing the shipping info of the skimmer...

Eventually (by eventually I mean 2 months later and after having my attorney write them a demand letter) I finally had established some communication with the sales manager... He offered to send me a new pool wall if I'd pay the cost of freight (no way)...

We ended up going in circles for another 3 months (now we're in september)... and my patience had finally worn thin.. Most of my emails were simply ignored, and every time I wrote them I had to send my response 2-3 times in order to get any response.. They NEVER returned phone messages, etc...

I was done.. I finally sent them an email stating that if the issue wasn't resolved within 1 week, I'd be filing a small claims court case against them. I also reminded them that it would likely cost them as much to fly an attorney out here for court as it would to just send me the wall..

This finally got their attention, and they told me that they'd send me the wall, the support tubes, and a replacement liner (the correct one) immediately.. Problem solved, just in time for the swimming season to end...

Or not...

December rolls around, and no pool wall has been delivered.. I contact them again, and get no response... I contact them again on Jan 15... again stating that I'll be filing a court case if it isn't resolved by feb 1.. and they respond.. stating that it was shipped months ago, and they'll get me a resolution... then he responds saying "I'll ship it monday" with no explanation about the phantom wall shipped "months ago"... 3 weeks later I get another response "you should have it next week"...


Finally, on February 11th, I get a call from the freight company to schedule delivery.

Friday feb. 15th, the wall and liner are delivered... Sure enough, wrong liner again, and there are no tubes for the top of the wall...

I contact Sean again, and he tells me to check the box with the pool wall for the tubes (duh).. I write him back telling him they weren't there.. no response.. I emailed him 5 more times trying to get a response to get these tubes sent... completely ignored.

I finally ordered the tubes through leslies and got the pool installed.. The wall he sent is 4" shorter (length) than the correct wall was, so I had to cut a piece of the bottom track, as well as cutting the top rail. I'm also dealing with a 2nd incorrect and ugly liner...

I'm more than a little irritated by the whole situation, because at least 3 people from this forum bought new pumps from them last spring based on my referral of the company.. and now that it's all over, I thought I'd share my story.

The long and short of it.. I'd highly recommend NOT buying a pool from leisure living. They seem ok if you're buying individual parts, but I wouldn't buy anything that has numerous items from them... I'd also highly recommend that anything you buy from them, you buy int he offseason... It's your only hope at any customer service.. Through the pool season, expect a 3+ hour wait to resolve anything on the phone, and at least a week between emails.

Sorry for the rant, but I wanted to make folks aware..

[CarlD]

They've expanded too fast over the last couple of years. These problems have been occuring even for more reliable customers like me--They make FantaSea pools which I have. I ran into some problems like this. Mark, the Sales Manager, has been very hard to get hold of since the expansion. He's actually a good guy, and I've not found them to be dishonest, just totally unable to cope with the vast increase in business from a mom-and-pop Buffalo, NY based pool-store to one of the biggest internet suppliers.


I don't know what to tell you--we LOVE our FantaSea and they are the only ones with anything like it. Yet the problems you describe are very real and I've talked to them about it. They will either fix it or lose customers.

Funny thing: Dell was the same way--I bought a PC from them when it was still PC's Limited, before Michael Dell put his name on it. They were recommended by Jim Seymour in PC Magazine--and they made a mess of it. It soured me on Dell for many, many years until they pulled it back together.