Ann Arbor Pool Builders Phoenix Associates Land Syndicate Local guys hobbled by shady out-of-state syndicate. Project management disaster. Ann Arbor Michigan

This report was like reading my own story. Actually everyone I've sent this link to thinks its about my pool. I actually thought someone had posted most of our problems. How sad our stories are about the same.

Short version of a long story All I wanted was a Caribbean looking pool. What I didn't want was a baby blue pool guess what I got? Yep, a baby blue pool.

Our saga began in Feb 06 & finally done in Aug 06. Not too bad from the previous post. It was promised to be completed in April 06. May came & went. June came & went. July came & went. Fun thing to have your back yard tore up all summer waiting for a pool to get done. It wasn't until I threatened to contact our attorneys did they get it done. Every contractor that came to my home asked me to pay them directly because ann arbor pools wasn't paying them. I was threaded that part of the equipment was going to be pulled out!

They got additional $14,000 from me & wanted over $14,000 more, which I told them they should have paid me because their dropping the ball on so many things.
2 years later my tile is falling off, low & behold no one will return my call hummm
Maybe Dennis should get out of the business because I won't recommend him. On the other hand the brothers of Dennis were great, Bud & I believe the guys name was Jim (sorry I'm trying to forget). They were very responsive to my complaints & concerns.

Bottom line for us even though our pool is beautiful & relaxing ,there is still a cloud over shadowing it because of the poor treatment from ann arbor pools.

1. It is not true that we require 50% down. Our contract state 20% down & 30 % after excavation.
2. The timeline looks correct. The job was a swamp in the spring.The Pool was not finished by Memorial day as planned. There was alot of pumping and extra visits to try to dry out the pool and area to complete the job.
3.The Homeowners filled in the trench after the building department gas line inspection on the weekend so they could work on their landscaping. they did not inform us and we showed up to fill it in. the gas line contractor was not very easy to work with. they refused to use the first trench or did a second so we hand dug a second trench for them and it waited on their inspection.
4. The Pool was moved further from the house with the homeowners approval and that made more fence and concrete needed to finish. We were able to get the concrete contractor to "Eat" the extra concrete but not the fence company.the homeowner would not approve the change order. The home owner went directly to the fence contractor and contracted them to install the fence. Less our O&P. That made it more affordable to the Homeowner. We approved that. and aggreed to "Eat" our O&P. We credited the homeowner for the cost of the fence so it is incorrect to say they paid for the fence twice.
5. The homeowners were told by me when we sold the job that Phoenix purchased the company in 2004.
6. I can not speek for the corporate manager that was here in response to those claims. But I can tell you he is no longer with the company.
7. Payments, Inspections & deliverys were not done as planned.
8. The cost overuns are for the sitework and dewatering. they were set up as estimates because we did not know how bad the water was going to be and it was the worst one I have seen in 30 years. Plus they added sitework of excavating approx. 20 2' diameter tree stumps and excavating a pit to bury them.
9. We approved removal of the winter cover and caulking from our contract and credited them the amounts because the said they have no money to complete this with the overuns.they purchase a cheep cover online.
10. We acually have at least 25 projects going at any given time. And things have not gone smooth this year.
11.We did intend to set a hopefull completion date of Memorial Day, and normaly that works out fine. but as stated by the homeoner we would not make it firm because of things like the project turning into a swamp and making it imposible to complete. But the project did take longer than it should have.
12.We are glad that the project is the quality that we want to have.
13. I do not know what was highly sensitive about the project completion. Normaly it would be graduation partys but the only thing I was told is that they are into Holloween and that day was important not to have anyone there and have it safe.
14. We try to agree the customer is always right even if they are wrong, but its hard to do.
15. The homeowners on this project have been great to work with and mostly understanding and we are thankfull for that. We could have done things better and wish we had. Some times our hands are tied.
16.This report will not help matters any it will make people angry and escalate this. I will try to keep this from escalating into us liening the job because we have not been paid completly.
17. I know Pfizzer is really treating their people bad by shutting down in town and these people now have to sell their house and move after building everything the way they want it. And this was their only summer to use the new pool and it was not completed. Makes us feel bad also.

In late August, we discovered that the fence contractor was unwilling to build our fence since AAP had not paid them for work done on other projects. So, we convinced AAP to let us pay the fence contractor directly and deduct the cost from the final budget. The pool project passed its final inspection in October 2007, about 1 year after we signed the contract with AAP.

Also in October 2007 we received a lien notice from the concrete contractor. AAP had not paid them. We immediately contacted the electric and plumbing contractors. As of Oct. 30, 2007, AAP had not been paid them either.

We are currently working with AAP to get them to pay the contractors with the money we gave AAP almost a year ago. We will be contacting the Michigan Construction Lien Fund.

Review of the final project balance sheet shows large cost overruns (+200%) on several allowance items. We also bought the winter cover ourselves and removed the deck-coping caulk to help adjust the balance we owe AAP. We hope to come to a final amount owed to AAP by mid November 2007.

Also, the original Phoenix rep mentioned has left our project. A new rep has been named.

UPDATE TO OUR OPINIONS:
Scope
Was the work required to construct the pool finished? YES, but only after we paid TWICE to have the fence done.

Cost
Was the work done using the given budget? NO The allowances were in many cases far below actual costs. AAP should have provided better initial estimates and alerted us that these costs were going above the budgeted amount .

We would NOT recommend Ann Arbor Pools.