JFY Pools JFY Enterprises, Sean Ruble, Sean Jest Ruble, Nicole Kronish, Nikki Kronish JFY POOLS Scammed our family out of $28,000 Elgin IL

If you are considering building an inground pool, we would like to share our experience with JFY POOLS. 

Unfortunately, because this is what they do, we expect JFY to respond to our review with unprofessional comments and personal attacks. We will let you decide who is more credible. 

We contracted with JFY pools to build an inground pool in early August 2017. As of March 2018, we have paid JFY over $28,000 and all we have to show for it is a bunch of pool walls scattered around a hole on our property that is in no way ready for completion. 

We moved to Saint Charles in July 2017.  We contracted with JFY at the beginning of August and paid our 1st installment payment of $7,600 to build an inground pool for our son who is non verbal and has Autism. We specifically explained to both Sean & Nicole who are owners of JFY Pools the importance of the pool for our son and were assured not to worry, the pool would be completed within 6 months, no problem.

Shortly after signing the contract, we learned the agreed upon location of the pool would need to be changed due to the interference with our septic field. We agreed on a new location and understood it would delay the start of the dig by a couple weeks. 

In August and September Sean rarely showed up when he agreed to ( we have dozens of emails and texts where JFY agreed to show up on a certain day and didn't). When Sean did show up it was late afternoon or he worked in the evening after dark.  ( We found this odd and it made us feel that our project was never a priority).

Not only did Sean not meet commitments, he made excuses galore. He disappears and makes excuses especially the day after we made installment payments.  He would cash our checks immediately on the evening we paid and then we wouldn't see him for days. Sean would also say a lot of things and make commitments that he  later that he "can't recall".

At the beginning of October, JFY started trucking out dirt but stopped before the job was completed and stated to us that we were supposed to pay for the dirt removal as it was being removed.  This was not communicated to us beforehand.  Sean demanded that we pay $2,000 or the guys hauling the dirt would stop and Sean wouldn't be able to dig anymore.  We gave Sean a Check for that amount- the check was cashed immediately. We never saw the dirt haulers again as Sean had some kind of falling out with them, which just led to Sean spreading dirt around the yard since he didn't have anyone to haul out dirt.

It was clear we had an issue with communication so we had Sean and NIcole out to our home so we could express our concerns.  Sean as usual made excuses for why he hadn't made much progress with the pool. He refused to take responsibilty and admit there were many beautiful Fall days he could have been working on our pool.  Both Sean and NIcole assured us again that the pool would be finished by the end of October. 

The October deadline wasn't met.   A new Thanksgiving deadline was promised to us by JFY. Sean demanded a 3rd installment payment of $12,000 before he would put up the walls of the pool. He threatened to stop work  if we didn't pay it right then.  We paid the installment and once again our check was cashed immediately.  Days passed before Sean showed up to do the wall.   The Thanksgiving deadline wasn't met.  Sean left us a message at 6pm one evening and told us that he was going to buy a canopy so he could work throughout the Winter.  He said if we didn't pay for the $400 canopy by 11pm that night, he would stop all work on the pool and remove his equipment. We refused to pay for the Canopy so Sean stopped work. 

We went back and forth with JFY for 3 weeks before coming to an agreement that the contract must be changed to all future payments would be made after work was completed and not before. Sean  complained to us that we were taking money from his family.  He blamed us for his lack of income in November. 

Sean agreed to use his own canopy but we didn't see him again until the end of February 2018. We called to let him know the walls of the pool were filling up with muddy water and asked if we should be concerned. We sent him a picture of the pool.  He replied that the pool was fine and he wasn't concerned. He would be out to drain the water.  It took him 4 days to come out.  We had to call Sean a couple weeks later because the water was up again. He came back out and drained the water again.  He said he was going to have to remove the walls because they had shifted and weren't level anymore. He blamed us for the delay in Nov/Dec and said this was costing him money and time.  What about the 6 weeks he promised us last Fall? 

We had been giving JFY the benefit of the doubt but it was clear to us we had been scammed.  We told JFY we were finished and asked him to remove his equipment from our property. Sean and Nicole refused to refund the last installment payment of $12,000 to us. 

We had 2 other pool companies come out to give us an estimate to move forward with building the pool.  Both pool companies told us that the current state of the pool site was unstable and had been dug too deep.  We would have to spend an additional $2,000 to $3,000 to have 2-4 feet of gravel hauled in to raise the pool up.  Currently the walls were below the surrounding ground and if we would have proceeded with JFY we would have had problems with water under the liner.  We basically dodged a bullet.  

So our advice is STAY AWAY FROM JFY POOLS.  We are not the first family JFY has done this to and unfortuntally we probably won't be the last.