Customer ReviewsforRoyal Fiberglass Pools of New York, Inc.

I absolutely do not recommend Royal Fiberglass Pools for your dream pool. What started as a retirement gift to have an in-ground pool at our home has become a nightmare that we will likely be dealing with for a long time. Although fiberglass pools were our preference even before contacting Royal Fiberglass Pools, we would go with gunite or vinyl if we could do-over rather than deal with Royal Fiberglass Pools. They are almost solely interested in collecting your money as early as possible with a 0 balance before they leave your home and no responsibility for any problems that arise from their work. They are fully greased! Customer service is horrid, their worker safety on site would result in serious or flagrant violations of OSHA safety standards (Excavating without a survey, no PPE other than gloves, no excavation safety, no rigging plans etc.). They do not approach their work as if they were the homeowner. Damage to property is clearly spelled out in their terms and conditions and it shows. We will, spend $20-30k repairing unnecessary damage to our driveway, trees, and yard as a result of their carelessness. I am fully qualified to make this assessment and very sorry I trusted this company that assured me whenever I asked a question or challenged their work that I should "trust me, you are going to love your pool." We are devastated and considering selling the home we dreamed of retiring in!

Please read the following response that pertains to the review from ******** *****, submitted by the foreman on the job. I am sorry that ***** feels as though this install has been such a bad experience. It is our goal to try to deliver a dream job to every customer. I also will apologize in advance, as this will not be a brief response. I personally ran the installation site at *****’s home-in which there were a lot of challenging factors that we had to contend with. I would like to try to address some of his concerns. First, regarding our horrible customer service, we have a database where we are able to track most conversations and exchanges that take place during the course of a sale. I do not generally review these interactions, as I am the lead installer, not part of the sales department. Upon reviewing, it became very clear that their dream pool changed several times. All correspondence seemed to be taking place between ***** and my staff, not *****. I saw at least 3 different quotes where a deposit was going to be made on a particular model, only to be changed last minute. They began with a “Flagship” which is a modest 12’ x 26’ non-diving pool. They then moved to a “Freedom”, which is a slightly larger 14’ x 30’ x 6’ deep pool, again a-non diving pool. A site survey was scheduled for the owner of the company to arrive, in person, to inspect the site and discuss the whole installation process. ***** was not present for this informative portion of the sale. Sometime after the site visit, the pool was again changed to one of our largest pools, a “Monaco” 16’ x 40’ x 8’ deep diving pool. In the exchanges I was able to review in our database, requests from ***** that were responded to, most times, within hours, but sometimes by the end of the day. The longest response was 2 days only because the attempt to communicate was done on a Friday, so it wasn’t responded to until Monday. This was during COVID, when we were averaging over 125 calls a day into the store, not to mention all of the emails coming in. Most pool stores had voicemails at that time, that indicated your call would be returned in the order it was received, which could be in a day or much longer. Further addressing the customer service comment, when installations are scheduled, the customers are generally informed when they are number 4 in the lineup. Weather and site conditions can make scheduling incredibly difficult. Once we start a job, we do not leave a job site until it is finished. Often this leads to the installers working very long hours and not always being able to communicate with the office staff. In the case of ***** and *****, I personally contacted ***** the evening before our installation was to begin. She seemed surprised, even though my office manager had told me they had been emailing back and forth. At any rate, I explained to her I was just finishing the previous install and that we would be refueling and loading the next morning to go to her house. I gave her a tentative arrival time between 10 AM and 12 PM. I contacted her again the next morning and had to leave a message reiterating the same time frame. She called me back about and 1.5 hours later asking our arrival time and I told her it was going to be more on the 12 PM side. She and ***** were “out doing errands and should be back by then”. At 12:05 PM on May 19, 2022, I text her that we were in route and that we would be there in 15 minutes. We were told to “access the yard through the driveway, not the lawn”. We got to their house before they finished running errands and we began our unloading process. After being onsite for 30 to 45 minutes with no homeowner, I again called ***** for their ETA… “they were just leaving East Syracuse”. ***** didn’t seem to realize we needed them to begin. I indicated to her that we did (also reiterated by the office), and that we would like to know where she should like the pool and go over our processes with her. She said that, “she thought we would put the pool where it would be the best install” and I inquired whether she wanted it parallel or perpendicular to the house. ***** said, “Parallel”. After laying out the pool per her instructions and about 1.5 hours on site with no homeowner, they came home to inform me that “we have a different definition of parallel”. I spent some time explaining why I chose the location and they approved it. I then took the extra time to layout the location they had original intended for. We spent a great deal of time going over elevations, additional stone, grading options, and concrete layout. ***** presented her sheet of “additional expenses to consider”. She had made plenty of notes and highlighted the whole thing. She seemed to be very aware of the information discussed during the contract process. We arrived at a final location and we could now begin. During the installation process, I remained in contact with *****. We began on a Thursday, had the pool in the ground and 3/4 full by the end of Friday. We worked late on Friday to ensure we had enough water in the pool due to the combination of the ground water and the weather forecast for Saturday. I called ***** on Sunday and told her I was making a special trip out to check on things, so that she wouldn’t be surprised at my presence in the back yard. We do not work Sundays; this was specifically an insurance trip to pump the ground water out and keep from a catastrophe. First impressions are a funny thing. In the first few minutes, ***** made it very clear to my team that he did not want this pool, that it was a gift for his wife. This is not the first time I have had a customer make this comment but when there is a spouse who doesn’t really desire the pool, they usually think of it only as a financial problem, etc. He hadn’t been involved during the contractual proceedings or in the site survey, which is generally a red flag for us. There was not going to be anything I could do to please *****. His main complaint to me through the process was that he couldn’t believe we didn’t have a planned drawing, and that we were making decisions while on site. He mentioned that he is an engineer and is used to having a drawing for everything. He doesn’t realize that I did have a drawing; it was a sketch that was made during the site survey, of everything discussed with *****. The sketch is nothing official, but indicates the position discussed, elevation, where the dirt will go etc… This is how we operate. It is not a binding drawing, so if the customer selects a different location at beginning of install, we try to accommodate that. If ***** wanted a full architect stamped design for his backyard, it could have been requested at any point during the 1 year wait time they endured, unfortunately. ***** and ***** did fall victim to the supply shortages of COVID. Our manufacturer ran out of resins and could not produce pools, pushing their install from the summer of 2021, into spring of 2022, like all other pool companies during that time. Our customers are free to hire other firms to help design a backyard. We do not offer this service in-house as customer demands change throughout the process, i.e.: changing the pool, the size, the location, the orientation etc…. Working with ***** was nice, working with *****, however, was not. On multiple times he slung profanity and insults at me. Statements such as, “I can’t believe you’re f****** still in business”, to which I replied, “Thank you for your feedback, that should be helpful to moving the job forward.” Another exchange over discussing the location of the pump and filter, ***** said, “Just finish the F****** thing, F****** bill me, and get off my property”. ***** was kind, but anxious. She asked the same questions repeatedly and I repeatedly took the time to answer them. The problems with ***** really started to become apparent as the installation ran into the “Unknowns”. He was upset with how much extra stone would be coming in, continually referencing the lack of a drawing. Even if a drawing plan had been made, it would not have taken into account, the ground water, banks collapsing, and horrible soil conditions - which led to the excess stone. In an effort to try to bring clarity to *****, I told her on Monday evening that I would itemize and send her a picture of where we were at with extra costs. I had mistakenly quoted her one load of stone less than what we had, so I did not bill her for the delivery of that. I sent her this at 9:24 PM. I did not hear back from her that night. I arrived at work the next morning and tried calling her, no response. We dragged our feet due to not hearing from her and finally showed up over that at 9 am, not knowing what to expect. I walked up on the back deck and had another wonderful exchange with *****. I knocked on his sliding door, he was inside. He stood up, walked right by me-not answering the door or acknowledging my presence. I tried calling ***** again, no answer. We had also been waiting on ***** to confirm with the code enforcer for the approval of the gas heater being under the deck. She said that she knew him, so she was going to call him. When I hadn’t received any response from her, I arranged the call myself and scheduled him to come give us approval. She came outside 20 to 30 minutes later. She said she, “had gotten my text, it was very helpful”. I asked if everything was ok inside? She said, “yes, it’s just a lot to take in” and apologized for me having to be in the middle of it and for ***** speaking to me that way”. I reassured her that this was not the first customer that the spouse didn’t want the pool, wasn’t involved in the conversations, and then is upset at the end. We actually have something about this situation in our “Rule Book”, that the customer signs off, as well. I asked again to make sure she was ok, and she said, “yes, and thank you, you have been great to deal with through the whole thing.” Following this interaction with *****, the code enforcer showed up, gave us approval for under the deck, and then we even discussed with ***** the terrible drainage on her property. I volunteered suggestions for her yard into the development’s retention pond. The code enforcer said that he was ok with that and told ***** to contact him when she wanted to come up with a plan for that. There had also been some back and forth regarding what they wanted for concrete around the pool. When the extra unknown expenses were seeming to cause a problem for ***** and *****, I wanted to verify that they still wanted the additional concrete we had discussed. Again, ***** had to verify with *****, she came back and said, “not to do the additional seating area we had discussed previously”. Upon hearing that, we started with grading the dirt and graded the whole area back in. As soon as we finished, ***** and ***** came out and said to “do the additional patio area”. So, we proceeded to move backwards, pulling our dirt back out and putting the stone in for the patio build up. Later that day we were finishing up, I asked ***** if she wanted me to grade any of the extra dirt into other low spots in the yard, she said, “yes, but wanted to check with *****”. She returned to say ***** said, “no don’t do anything else just leave it piled”. When it came time to learn about the pool, ***** was there alone. It seemed as though ***** wanted nothing to do with us or it. While I continued to try everything possible to grade that horrible wet soil, ***** went through our “Pool School” with one of my guys. When I finished, I answered several more questions again regarding pool school afterwards. It was brought to my attention after leaving that ***** “hadn’t felt like she retained enough info and had more questions”. My office manager tried to accommodate her with several offerings of her own “after hours” schooling. It is my understanding that after several attempts they did finally set a time. Sadly, when my office manager had left work to head to *****, she received notice of an unexpected death in the family. She did not want to go back to work to get *****’s number, and she did not have a way to contact her to indicate the change in plans. This was a failure on our part, but one driven by the unexpected loss. We gladly tried to reschedule to assist ***** but was told that she was all set, at that point. In fact, prior to receiving *****’s BBB review, I had suggested to Jason, the Owner of Royal Fiberglass Pools of New York, that the dirt was so unworkable, maybe we should go in after it has had weeks of drying time to try to clean up the site a little more if a landscaper was not involved yet. Contrary to what ***** is suggesting, we do care about the project after we have been paid. We have standardized pricing, meaning we are able to mail out pricing on all of our shells without coming to see your site. It is to keep things fair from one customer to the next, regardless of their negotiating experience. I don’t want to bid a job, building in every possible expense we could encounter. If we didn’t encounter any problems, the customer would be very displeased with paying for that. Similarly, we do not want to absorb the unknowns. We also have an entire Rule Book of what to expect from us and what we expect from our customers during the installation process. In addition to that, we include a sheet of everything our pricing includes based on “normal ground conditions”. Normal conditions are yards that have less than a 12 inch grade variation, no ground water, no bed rock. We indicate that whatever we find in your ground belongs to you. If it’s gold or oil, that’s yours, but if it’s problems, that’s your too, but we will work with you to keep moving forward. We also include a sheet that indicates “additional expenses to consider”. The sheet breaks out things such as fencing, water to fill the pool, dirt removal fees, electrical, etc….but, the larger a pool gets, the more expensive the entire project becomes. When you add an extra foot of sidewalk to a 16’ x 40’ pool, it is substantially more than adding it to a 12’ x 26’ pool, while adding that same extra foot. When you have grade variations, all the patio area will be built up with stone. The install includes a certain amount of stone based on the size of the pool, depending on grade, soil conditions, and desired patio size, but this amount can change significantly. This particular job site had very large grade variations, terrible soil conditions, and ground water at approximately 2.5 feet deep. Ground water causes some serious challenges when excavating and installing an in-ground pool. It is exceptionally more challenging when the pool is a large diving pool with a depth of 8 feet. *****’s damage to his trees is minimal at best, some missing bark. The damage to the yard is par for the course when you are doing a massive back yard renovation. There will be ruts, there will be missing grass and a lot of dirt. We are responsible for establishing a rough grade. I am not responsible for restoration, topsoil, or seeding. We did not bill in the contract for any of that, we have not collected any money towards that. I do feel bad about the damage to the driveway. We have to have access to the site, if that access is over black top, we try our best to protect it. *****’s driveway was cracked all over - prior to us arriving. The area of a driveway that is most prone to damage is at the “edge” where it meets the yard. The weight of the dump trucks fully loaded, coming off the driveway to the edge, is the impact spot. At *****’s, we put down matts, timbers, and additional stone to try to disperse the load. However, due to the incline of the yard, the number of trucks needed, and the angle the trucks were forced to come off the driveway-some damage did take place. I would guess a section roughly 3 feet long by 1.5 feet wide was broken out. It appeared to be two layers of black top, one applied on top of the other. The way they separated seemed as though they never had adhesion to one another. It was two distinct layers of break. I have only seen that with patch work before. If they sell their house, I think someone will be very fortunate to have the improved back yard. Prior to the pool, it was a swamp. With the right landscaping it will be a beautiful retreat. A renovation of this size with their particular conditions, is going to be a project to restore. Moving forward, I would gladly assist ***** in her additional needs or requests for further assistance in understanding the operation and maintenance of the pool. I do not wish to deal with *****, as he has verbally attacked and insulted myself and the company. Sincerely, Sam J****