“Throughout the years, Douglas Aquatics has gone through many changes but continuously remains dedicated to its core values of honesty, integrity, knowledge, dependability and accountability.” – Douglas Aquatics Website
Sounds good right! One big lie! More like unethical, dishonest, out of date, and absent. Two years plus for a three-week pool build is what we got from this company. False billings for machine rentals not used on site, inflated change orders, labor hours billed when no worker were on site and a pool when finally turned on two years after the fact had water cascading out of the skimmers because the plumbing was backwards. The owner has not reviewed new pool building techniques since he opened in the 70s. He is the most unethical contractor I have ever dealt with. Example: We had trees in the proposed pool area. The salesman advised if we had the trees removed and stump ground down there would be no additional costs, as the roots/soil had to be removed anyhow. Doug said he would not start until we agreed to a charge order for stump removal. The stump removal took less than 90 minutes, but I received a bill for close to $2000 which included 8 hours of labor for 3 workers and a full day rental of an excavator. (that’s right if his equipment is not available, he rents and passes the cost on to the customer without discussion). Luckily, I was on site and took pictures and video to confront his false billing. I found a vendor invoice which had an erroneous overbilling of $2400. I asked Doug about this. “Yes, [we] discovered this back in March” well it was then December at that point, and he neglected to inform me of this? No credit to my account? Hell no. We live in Tidewater, but when they ran into silty soil, he had no idea how to deal with it, called it expandable clay and wanted to bring in an engineer “to pass the liability off Douglas Aquatics.” I wanted to change lights from old school bulbs to LEDs, it was like he never heard of LEDs. He had to contact the manufacture, distributor and the highschooler next door to find out if he could install LED lights in the pool. Then he orders the lights – another change order for $2800. I expected three lights and a controller which would allow use to program or control the lights. Not the case. What I got was three lights and two transformers (incorrect ones at that) that when you want to change color you have to flip the light switch on and off repeatedly to cycle through… There are 21 colors!! The lights sell online for about $350 and the transformer about $170. You do the math. No labor provided by Douglas Aquatics for the lights, I had to pay an electrician to run the conduit and lights. Every time I confronted Doug on billing and delays, suddenly, they would abandon the job site – intimidation attempts for me not to challenge his billing? At three different time the company did not show up on site for more than 60 days. At one point he had a worker go into my garage and steal the boxed liner and removed all equipment from the site for 64 days because I called him out on false change order billings. This caused me to file my first complaint with DPOR. Now we are heading to civil litigation. Look elsewhere if you want a quality pool.

The finished product was acceptable, but the communication, attention to detail, and pride of workmanship, particularly with the senior staff was very poor. The prevailing attitude seemed to be path of least resistance to get the job done, pointing fingers at other trades whenever possible, and sticking the client with as many costs as possible. The senior construction manager was especially poor on those fronts, had an arrogant attitude and to make matters worse, on the few occasions he actually showed up on site, was spitting tobacco amidst a pandemic. The guys on site doing the work were largely unsupervised and regularly left messes for me and other contractors to clean up.

Communication

Communication - Janice Taylor is awesome! She is knowledgeable, responsive, and always helpful.

Additional Comments

Additional Comments - I have been very happy with their service.

We’ve had two pools built and serviced by Douglas Aquatics, the first in the mid-90’s and one last year. We went to them the second time because of our great first experience and they didn’t let us down. They have a long term solid record of quality and service. The sales, construction and maintenance employees we deal with are always professional, trained, reliable and friendly.

My experience was good. This was the second time we had Douglas Aquatics install an inground pool for us. This speaks volumes re: our experience.

I have been dealing with a multiple year issue with my pool. It is yet to be resolved and acknowledging the issues would be a great start.

mgmt good, line staff at the end of the season (after students have left) horrible. very disappointed

No comment at this time

The teams that come out here are professional, reliable, friendly.

I have been happy with Douglas Aquatics.

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Since we are not open this year and we are just receiving services to maintain the pool I have had to call numerous times to get someone to put water in the pool when it was low, to get the green algae out of the pool. It does not appear that someone is coming on a regular basis to maintain.