Monkey Rock Pools

I retained Steve Consterdine and his associates at Monkey Rock Pools to provide full pool service from late 2011 through August of 2016. Initially Steve provided a quality, reasonably priced, cleaning service and my pool was rather consistently looking good. Though I thought everything was included with the service I was paying for; a few months later after a couple weeks of my pool not looking its best; Steve advised he had tested for phosphates and the phosphate level in my pool was very high. He indicated that due to the expense of the treatment chemicals; they were not included; and he could bill me for a treatment or I could order the chemicals myself. Apparently that was a little asterisk he had failed to mention to me when I retained him. Aside from that annoyance; Steve continued to provide pretty good service; though his repairs to my pool scrubber always somehow took multiple weeks; as though he was overbooked and didn't have time to service equipment in a timely manner. Things continued to be pretty good until my pool got assigned to one of his associates. With Steve no longer servicing my account himself; communication regarding needed repairs and timing of new filter purchases declined to almost none. My pool was not as clear as it should have been for several weeks this past summer since the tech he was sending to my house apparently did not spend the amount of time that Steve used to spend making sure everything was good; and also likely because they never told me when I needed a new filter or other maintenance purchases anymore. I advised Steve on a couple occasions that I'd appreciate better communication regarding when things needed to be serviced; however they never really got better at telling me about things that needed to be taken care of. Though I was close to seeking out a new pool company a few times already; Steve's handling of the latest issue that occurred was inexcusably unprofessional and pushed me to immediately retain a new pool service company. My impeller had broken and I authorized Steve to repair it for me. After his determining the problem and my immediately authorizing the repair on Tuesday; the following Sunday afternoon he texted me out of the blue and asked if he could come over to perform the repairs. I was out at the time but told him he could come on over and take care of it. By the time I got home; I had forgotten about his text; so it wasn't until later in the week I remembered and went to look to see if he had actually done the repair work. He had left the old broken impeller; however what I noted more immediately was the water squirting out of two pinhole cracks in the impeller pump housing; where he had apparently not used due care in handling the parts as he performed the requested repairs. I immediately took a photo of the problem and sent it to him; as I was annoyed that he had not contacted me to disclose the damage and proactively suggest a fix for it. After waiting a week for a reply; I had not heard from him; so I thought perhaps my email got lost. I reached out again and received a reply where he stated "I did not reply due to the fact I would say something I may later regret. I gave up my one day off to get your pool water circulating..." So instead of an apology and suggestion for corrective action; I received a message advising that he was apparently upset to the point he felt he may say something he would regret. I was truly dumbfounded that he was upset with me for requesting that he fix my equipment that had been damaged and then went on to lament he had come out on his day off to perform the initial repair. I had not even bugged him about when he was going to come and had no expectation of his showing up on Sunday; so that was completely his choice; not a request I had made or favor I had asked of him. I proceeded to inquire as to how he intended to resolve the damages to try to reach an agreeable resolution to the issue hhe created; however he simply sent me a final invoice and has been completely non-responsive to my repeated attempts to contact him via text and email. I finally paid the amount he requested on the final invoice in the interest of not having to waste additional time and money trying to contact him. He never reached out to offer an apology and he never attempted to fix the problem he created. I ended up having to spend an evening repairing the cracked housing myself after it became clear Steve had no intentions of doing anything to correct the damaged housing. His complete disregard for my time and his lack of communication ultimately ending with his refusal to reply to me at all speaks volumes about his personality and how you can expect to be treated as a valued customer of Monkey Rock Pools. Given my experiences; I would suggest that you save yourself the the headache of trying to deal with Steve and company and just find a pool service other than Monkey Rock Pools to begin with.