This is our family website to tell you about our pool construction.
This was our family dream. For the first time in 23 years we were going to have a pool and outdoor entertaining area. Our dream has become and still is a nightmare. Over the months we have learnt so much. We searched the internet for a site like this before signing the contract and found none - we wanted to find a site to help those hiring a pool construction firm for the first time. We wanted to know what to watch out for, what pitfalls to avoid and how to get a good outcome. We wanted to find a discussion forum. Somehow there was none. Whether we will get a good outcome we do not yet know but we know a lot about pool construction in Australia now.
We believe that most people only construct a pool once in their lifetimes - mainly for our children and for family fun. Whether we can afford $30,000 or $250,000 we give it our best and want the best for our families. Because most of us do it only once (pool building) we are by definition naive consumers and the pool industry consistently deals with us - the naive clients. Perhaps they find us frustrating, perhaps they find us easy to exploit. Anyway we feel exploited and have created this site so others can avoid the mistakes we have made.
We have deliberately not named our construction company. You need to email us and make personal contact for us to disclose that and we may not disclose their identity as we do not wish to put these guys out of business - our site is to help improve the discernment of the consumer, because, if you are planning to build a pool discernment is a real plus!!
However our journey is negative, we have spent an enormous amount of money, we have been treated with contempt by the pool building contractors, the defects are beyond belief and with our SPASA contract they are now several months past the due date of completion and we can do nothing except take them to the Consumer and Complaint tribunal which has a wait of several months for a decision and order that they must complete the pool. It has been an enormously time consuming and frustrating exercise - we have learnt a lot and wish all the future builders of pools in Australia to know the kind of tricks these guys can get up to and use on naive clients. We have shared stories with other luckless consumers who found it all too hard - we thank them for their time - through them we realised we were not alone in our sense of exploitation and the similarity of tricks used was at times quite uncanny. This urged us on to create this site and to tell our story.
We wish this site to become an advocacy site for improved government regulation of the swimming pool industry - so the standards improve and "one off" consumers like ourselves do not find themselves parked between a rock and a hard place. Please tell your story too in the discussion forum so together we can become agents of change for the better.
We have taken the pool construction through from inception to date (story pages) and listed the lessons we learned along the way (lesson learned pages) so you can make sure you don't make the same mistakes. You can flip between these pages so if you are time poor you can start with the lesson learnt page and work backwards. You may make (or have made) different mistakes and if you think you can help other consumers please use the discussion forum to share your experiences.
May your pool construction be stressfree and lead to much happy swimming!!
