Triton Pools LV

Terrible Customer Service, extended delays bordering on a year now.

My personal and truthful account of our nightmarish experience dealing with Triton Pools of Las Vegas. This is going to be an awfully long rant, but I want to keep this as thorough and truthful as possible, so that you know the details surrounding my personal experience with this company, so that when considering a pool company, you can make an informed decision whether or not you want to work with these people. Everything started out fine, and the point person Jene (Who is no longer with them), was actually terrific. But if I had to guess, like so many contractors these days, they use a tactic which industry peeps refer to as Getting them pregnant, which is a cute way of saying.just promise anything to get the client under contract, at which point, they are locked in and cant really go elsewhere without a lot of delays and expenses. So they end up taking on more work than they can actually handle, which results in extended delays on the customer, without recourse or repercussions to the contractor. So everything starts with a design/rendering, which generates a quote, and a deposit. After that, you move on to dialing in all of the specific details, so as to create an architectural plan. Now it should be noted that when you ask the salesperson how long it takes, and they say Typically 10-12 weeks, that they are not talking about the ENTIRE process including design, architectural plans, permitting, etc.they are ONLY talking about once they actually break ground. Which may seem like common sense, but when you are 5 months into the design/plans/permitting phase and they havent broken ground yet, (plus, we had an easement on our property which was NOT their fault, but did add a month of delays to the process) you start to see the issue. In a nutshell, we paid our deposit in April of 2022, but they did not break ground until September. From there, things started reasonably well, with the only initial issues being when one subcontractor would finish a portion of the process, it could be a week or so before an inspection would happen, then maybe another week or two before you could get the next busy subcontractor out to the job. All in all, not 10-12 weeks, but not unreasonably far off. The trouble really started in December, when they were supposedly ready to schedule the pre-plaster inspection So in NV, (as in most places), a fence is required around a pool, so that children don't fall in, even if you don't have children. The specifics of the required barrier are pretty standard, it has to be 50" tall, any gates have to have self-closing hardware, and any framing/bars have to be vertical so that it can't be climbed like a ladder. Now, that isn't something that I would have known, but it would seem that this IS something that ANY pool company would know, or if not, they'd at least know after they did their first pool. I have a 40" chainlink dog-fence around my backyard, which in NO WAY meets code for a pool fence, but these guys in their infinite wisdom, failed to mention that, possibly figuring. "It should be fine and scheduled that inspection. 1 day prior to that inspection, they showed up at the house, stating that they needed to Make sure the existing fence was adequate, and to Install alarms on all doors leading to the backyard. OK, both of these thigs were news to me, but sure, youre here, do your thing. The first thing that happened was that they informed me that they may need to install some self-closing hardware on the pre-existing dog fence gates, to meet code. Sure, do what you have to do, but then they oddly left without actually installing any of the aforementioned hardware. The second, and REALLY troubling thing that they did was with the alarm install..So apparently, to meet code, ANY doorway out of your house that leads directly to the pool MUST have an alarm on it, so you are alerted in case a child leaves the house and heads for the pool, even if you dont have children, which we dont. OK fine. So 3 doors have to be alarmed. Before they finished, one of the installers came up to me and said I have to show you something.. and took me to our primary rear exit that leads to the backyard. He said, Do you use this door very often?, to which I replied, Yes, like 10+ times a day. He then said, Well, if you want to have ANY chance of passing inspection tomorrow, then Id strongly advise that you DO NOT use this door until inspection is over, let me show you why. (This is where it gets REALLY good.) He explains to me that because the alarm is so big and bulky, there wasnt enough clearance in this door frame to actually fit the alarm, and still be able to open the door. So he explained that he installed it anyway, but showed me that IF I were to open the door, that the alarm would be physically torn off the door frame, further reiterating So DONT open that door, or the alarm will get torn off and you will fail inspection. I thought for a moment on what I thought was obvious, just in case I was missing something, but then asked the question anyway.SoYou dont think the Inspector is going to open this door, to TEST the alarm??? The look on this kids face was similar to the look a dog gives you when you ask it to solve an algebraic equation. I mean, he totally went blank for a few seconds, then took out his phone and saidUm..Ive got to make some calls. He made about 10 minutes worth of calls, and then just left without saying a word. I messaged my contact at Triton, showing them a video of my opening the door, and ripping the alarm off the door frame, and they messaged back and said Yes, were aware, and were working on a solution. At this point, I assumed that the inspection was cancelled. The next thing that happened was at around 3:30am, when the alarm that they had Installed on the door IN our bedroom that leads out to the backyard, simply fell off, and went off like an air-raid siren IN our bedroom, causing our 2 dogs to go into an absolute frenzy, trashing everything in the bedroom as I scrambled to my feet from a dead sleep, panicking and trying to figure out where the EXREMELY loud noise was coming from, before finding the alarm on the floor and trying my best to stop it (unsuccessfully) from blaring as the dogs continued their melee with my wife now screaming at me to make it stop, before finally resorting the physically smashing it to bits before it finally stopped. Trust me, you never want to wake up this way, and all because of a shoddy installation. (The third and final alarm, fell off on its own the next day, making their installation a 100% failure.) Next, imagine my surprise when an inspector showed up at 6:55am the next morning, (Nope, they never calcelled the inspection!?!) and proceeded to rip into me like I had committed some sort of crime! The inspector had an absolute field day educating me on everything that was wrong with the small chainlink dog fence, waxing on and on about how they should have known that and how scheduling this inspection was a waste of everyone's time, etc...(And was equally disgusted in the alarm installation, but Ill stay on the Fence for now.) Now, had I known that the existing fence would in no way, shape or form EVER qualify as a pool-fence, I could have STARTED with a fence installation. But instead, my project ground to a halt as I started from scratch cold-calling fence companies to gather quotes and trying to get on someone's schedule. As I was getting quotes, I got an email from Triton titled Change Order which when I opened it, it was a contract committing me to paying them an extra $28,500 for a "Pool Fence" with no detail on what it would look like, be made out of, etc.., so when I asked them what THEIR version of this pool fence would look like, they said "It will match the fence in the front of your property", which is all 2" square HORIZONTAL bars. Very classy looing indeed, but I pointed out that the pool inspector JUST SAID that the fence couldn't be constructed in any way that a child could climb like a ladder. They thought about that for a minute and replied..."OK, we'll make them vertical". So let's recap... -Pool company didn't know a 40" chainlink dog fence wouldn't meet code. -Pool company then tries to bill me $28,500 for a horizontal-bar fence that IF I had gone ahead with, would have failed inspection and would have needed to come down. It is THIS fact that made me lose any and all faith in their abilities as contractors. Let me repeat the takeaway here..IF I had signed their change order, I would have spent $28,500 on a fence that also would have failed inspection and would have had to come down!! -I found an outside company that came in a installed the right product for $9200. Moving on When MY fence guys were putting in the fence, they nicked the gas line that Triton put in. They told me that it was because it was buried to shallow, but I dont know the code for that, so that may or may not have been true. I called Triton and let them know right away that it needed to be repaired, understanding fully that the repair was on me, as it was MY fence people nicked it. Triton quoted $3300 for the repair, which I thought was high, so I called the professional gas company that services my property, and they came out and did a professional, warrantied/guaranteed repair, for $590. THEN...(This is unbelievable...)...Triton calls me and lets me know that BECAUSE I went with an outside company, that they were VOIDING MY WARRANTY. How messed up is that? Here's why that is messed up... Triton is NOT a gas company, they would have needed to pick up the phone and call a real, professional gas company to do the work, a phone call that according to their $3300 quote, they were going to make $2700 on. Instead, I called a real, professional gas company, and got a real, professional repair done for $590, and they have the audacity to tell me that because I did not go through them and pay the extortionate upcharge of $2700, they are voiding my warranty?? There are SO many more examples of incompetence on this job that I should write, but as I said, I'd be here for a week. It is worth mentioning that I put my deposit down with them 10 months ago and my pool still isn't done. Our most recent delay was caused by something that was built completely contrary to the plans, which had to be ripped out and entirely redone. When I asked the concrete/rebar subcontractor how it happened when the plans were crystal clear, the subcontractor said "They never gave me the plans". These were a set of 5 in-pool Barstools, that the plans showed as 16x16 rectangular stools that were to come up out of the floor, and finish about 10 below the waters surface, so that you could sit on them poolside, and set your beverage on the side tof the pool as if you were sitting at a bar. Instead of building what was on the plans, they instead used 10 round sona-tube forms, poured them appx 9 from the wall, leaving not enough room for legs, and pouring them nearly 24 from the waters surface, so that only really tall people could sit on them and not be underwater. I discussed how they werent what was on the plans, and they told me theyd fix them. So they sent some concrete people in to add some rebar, and build 16x16 forms to pour the right shape over the wrong shape. Before they poured, I measured the new forms proximity to the wall, and it was now going to be 7 from the wall, which when you add 3/4 of plaster to the wall, AND the stool, would have left only 5.5 of room for your legs to fit, which would have ONLY worked it we were all small children. Mind you, each of these setbacks cost us a couple of weeks here and a couple of weeks there.. Triton came in and agreed that they needed to be ripped out and redone correctly, so they sent someone in to start from scratch. The rebar was done fairly quickly, as were the forms, and before you know it, they were pouring. The forms came off, and I noticed that 2 out of the 5 forms had either warped, or relaxed, resulting in 2 of the stools looking like the leaning tower of Piza. By this point, I had started posting on Facebook, chronicling this seemingly never-ending comedy of errors and incompetence on Tritons part. This post showing pictures of the wonky, leaning barstools was my third in the series, but this time, Triton blocked me on Facebook, so that I could no longer tag them. I thought that was kind of funny, so I mentioned it to Omar, their project manager, and he got really aggressive and dismissive with me, saying the following words. "You just keep doing what you're doing bro, it's no skin off my back. You want to go on with your rants, that's fine, just do it, One unhappy customer isn't going to cost me a *** dime." And just like that, it switched from one person discussing a bad experience with humor and levity to blow off steam.to something VERY different. Its one thing to continue to *** a job to the point where we are about to enter month 11 without an end-date in sight, but its an ENTIRELY different situation when you taunt me and my frustrations, laugh at them, and tell me that because Im only one person, that my words Wont cost them a *** dime. Challenge accepted, now my mission is to cost him a *** dime.