Hobert Pools Ripoff Dishonest representation and extremely poor quality of work with no supervision Richardson Texas

After speaking with Hobert on 9/7, the plaster crew was out on the 8th and the pool was filled that night. The pool school was on Friday, the 10th. Apparantly this can only be scheduled at their convenience, not the consumers, since they don't work evenings, so once again, my husband had to take off work. He did bring out the remaining supplies and equipment, including the plaster brush. I thought it interesting that you are supposed to brush down the plaster twice a day but the brush doesn't come until two days later. I hope that delay won't cause problems later.

I still strongly recommend no one use this company and if they are giving you problems, I found Brett Shipp with Dallas WFFA channel 8 to be quite helpful and interested in reporting on the situation. Best of luck to anyone who uses this company.

September 7, 2004

I was finally able to reach Hobert this morning. I would especially like to thank the nice receptionist who personally took my message to him while I was on hold and was able to connect me with him. We have come to a resolution on the $500. He will not bill us the $500, and we will not ask him to pay if our tree dies. I delivered the final payment to the Corinth office today where Chelle faxed a copy of my check to the Richardson office and called Linda to tell her she had it. She then called Hobert for me, and he let me know the clean up and plaster crews are scheduled to be at my house tomorrow. Hopefully all will go well and there will be no further problems. I will continue to update this as things wrap up.

I'm glad Shelly was able to have her problems resolved, but I still can't get anyone at the Hobert office to call me back. I just don't understand why someone cannot call me and talk to me to resolve these problems. My husband and I talked with several other pool companies at the Parade of Homes today in Frisco, where he has been working, and were told that Hobert is only a figure head and that his wife really runs the company. If that's really the case, maybe I'm just wasting my time waiting on him to return my calls. I'll have try calling her on Tuesday to see if she can get me some results. I've had better customer service when dealing with a used car dealership. I know the Hobert office is reading these postings, so since they don't seem to return phone calls, maybe they'll respond to this. Call us! You have the number!

September 2, 2004 - The concrete truck showed up this morning at 8:30 to pour the deck. The are pouring it as I am writing this...

I started feeling really bad about everything I have written about Hobert while I was thinking about this Summer... It started out really unusually rainy and I am sure that put Hobert behind on all of their pools. Then I started noticing that all of the negative things that I have found about Hobert were posted mostly this Summer.

I want to apologize for the things I have written, while they are true, they have tried hard to get our pool done and make us happy. We have had a few frustrations, but as I said, it has been a unique Summer and I will cut them some slack.

I also want to add that I am pregnant and I have some raging hormones right now. My husband couldn't believe how "hot" I was over this whole thing. I have an excuse - I am pregnant. :) And, I am impatiently wanting to swim in my pool in my backyard this summer.

So, Hobert, please accept my written apology and I hope this hasn't caused any riffs between us. We were referred to Hobert by a friend, and we know they did a good job on their pool. And, if asked we will tell anyone who is wanting to put a pool in that we had some problems, but it was a unique situation and we would after everything consider using Hobert again.

Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Called at 4:30 and talk to Lisa. Hobert was already gone for the day but she would tape the message to his door.

Wednesday, September 1, 2004.
It's now 6:00 and Mr. Murphy still hasn't returned my calls from last week and yesterday. Now I see why his employee's have such problems with communication skills and service. It's only 11 days until my daughter's birthday, and these are the problems still not resolved:

Faulty filter pressure gauge has not been replaced.
Cracked drain not replaced.
Blocks used to level equipment pad not replaced.
Pole cap and sac crete have not been replaced.
Equipment panel still incorrectly set.
Missing skimmer basket
Turbo cell for salt system missing

Things still needing to be done that we have been told will be done after plastering:
Remaining pipe will be cut back and fitted with returns.
Viper pool cleaner and other cleaning equipment will be delivered
Pool school will be scheduled.

Hopefully, Mr. Murphy will call me back to settle this disagreement over $500 we're being billed because the designer sold us one pool and gave the construction crew a different plan that we didn't agree to or sign.

Between this site and other sites, it's amazing to me how many other people are having the same problems we have. Hopefully others can learn from our mistake.

I should have started my own report because this is really Elizabeth's. But, I wanted to add that my Salesperson, Chelle Cates has been WONDERFUL. She has worked her tail off on making us happy (She's really the only one) Hobert should give her a big fat raise and if she ever decides to go with a company other than Hobert, we will definitely go with her again - and would recommend her to our other friends who are going to be getting pools in the near future.

September 1 - The deck crews FINALLY came out today and finished what they started yesterday. I am not sure what all went on yesterday, but they started and didn't get finished. The City came out and approved it and we are getting the deck poured tomorrow and supposedly the plaster crews are coming on Friday which means we will be swimming on Labor Day! Woo h*o!!!

Jon called today and said "regarding your letter" (referring to this website) "I wasn't being sarcastic when I said to tear out the tile and coping, I was being serious, I like to stop the job when clients are unhappy and fix the problem" Well, my husband didn't feel like he was being serious at the time it was being said, but we accept that and your apology, Jon and we appreciate the call.

If Hobert does everything they have said they are going to do and gets this taken care of by Friday, we are going to be pretty content considering everything that has happened. We definitely won't go with Hobert in the future - but we also won't make sure EVERYONE knows about our less than satisfactory experience with them.

This may be my last post unless they don't get the plaster in on Friday.

Friday, August 27, 2004, Linda said she would have Hobert call me either Saturday or Monday. No one called. Today at 4:30 I called the office to ask to speak to him and was told he was gone. Linda had left too. Lisa said she'd "tape the message to his door" to call me. It seems this failure to communicate goes all the way to top when even the owner of the company is too busy to call a custumer back. Maybe we'll hear from them tomorrow.

Unfortunately, we didn't document most of the dates and conversations with Hobert Pools, but there were several instances where we had the very same experiences with Hobert Pools. We even had the same construction supervisor, Jon.
The tile and grout was done VERY poorly. When we tried to complain about it to Jon, he was very condescending and told us he was going to "stop everything and have them come and tear the tile and coping out and completely redo it" (This was a sarcastic remark) We knew this would GREATLY reduce our swim time since it's already the middle of August. Keep in mind they are JUST getting to this and we signed our contract at the end of June.

August 30, 2004-It has been 2 and a half weeks since we have seen ANYONE here on our property to work on our pool. We have called and complained every single day that no one has come, and we have gotten the same run around. "Oh, they will be there tomorrow" Only the next day comes and still no one. Hobert was granted access through two houses under construction behind us at the beginning of this, now these houses are almost done and Hobert was told 4 days ago they had one week of access left... hmmm.. wonder what they are going to do when they have no access? Doesn't seem like it's our problem, but I am sure it will become ours. Thier excuse when we complain is, "there are several people in your situation, there are 60 pools waiting for their decks to be formed right now" It really isn't any of my business that other people are waiting as well, and I don't really give a rat's rear!!! I want MY pool to be built!!

We were also very confused to find that after our salesperson told us that all of the crews were Hobert's personal crews, they in fact were VERY obviously other companies. Which makes me wonder, if they can subcontract some of their work to other companies, which clearly they have, why can't they contract more crews to get our deck formed so we can get this nightmare over with!? It's all very frustrating.

I wish I knew of some way to "get back" at Hobert Pools, they pretty much have us between a rock and a hard place. We feel like our lives are being held hostage and our whole summer taken from us since we can't really go in our backyard right now, it's completely torn up. Our poor dogs can't go out and play like normal because the fence is down and they run off.
Like Elizabeth, I highly recommend that you use another pool company other than Hobert. The workmanship and communication is very poor.

Elizabeth, You definitely weren't the exception. I wish there were some way to get ahold of you so we could vent frustrations. :)
We intend on filing a complaint with the BBB when this is all finished. I don't know what else to do but to warn people against this company. It is a blatant rip-off.

And the story continues:

Monday, August 23, 2004 - Clean up crew cleans up area around pool including cutting off exposed rebar and moving grounding clamps closer to ground. They then backfilled area.

Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Per Linda, service tech will be out to replace light and will bring pole, saccrete, and cap. Jay will replace post rather than have them set it in wrong place.

Emma called from Hobert office leaving message that we can access our pool information on their web site, leaving us the log in information. This is information we should have received before digging began.

Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Jay calls three times to check pool status with Linda.

Linda calls back to say Mitch will be out that day and acknowledges that he should have been out day before. She asks about tile, and Jay explains that some of the tile had only been set barely by edges with no thinset in center of tile. She replies, Good thing that was caught. It's important that it sticks. Jay tells her about problems with setting equipment panel and problems with communicating with workers due to language problems. Linda says Sol Tile is owned by Hobert's son-in-law. She told Hobert about problems with tile, and he does not believe in sub standard work.

Jay explained that the only improvement is communication because of Linda. She replied, If Hobert knows something is wrongsubstandard work going on .then he addresses ithe does care about his pools and how they are a designed and how they are builtso I'm sure he's probably already taken care of that situation with Victor. Linda acknowledges that plans do not show elevation. She also acknowledges Jay's time spent supervising the situation.

She tells Jay that Ryan will be coming out, but David can't reach him on his cell, so she will keep trying him. She says that she know Jay has better thing s to do that sit around waiting on him to arrive. Jay also explained concern about section of fence cut down and that he needs to be able to communicate with workers and how rude it is for them to speak English when they know he can't understand them. Ryan does speak English.

Ryan came out to replace light. He does give us the operator and service manuals for the light.

He brought out pole, but no sac crete or cap.

Thursday, August 26, 2004
Jay called Linda to check today's schedule. She explained need for final payment then plastering can be done. Other items left are service techs responsibility. Jay reminds her that pool still needs to be cleaned out again before plastering and that Ryan brought the pole but no sac crete or cap. Ryan said that was all he was told to bring. Linda says she'll have the service tech bring that when he comes back out. He also has to tighten bond wire and bend rebar down. Jay explains the backfill guys have already done that. She will send crew back out for clean up. Final payment is $1,442.75. She will send out clean up crew and see when plasterer can come out but he is booked for Friday, so probably it will be Monday.

I called Linda to discuss final payment. I explained we have no problem paying the final installment but have a dispute over the $500 addendum since elevation was marked the opposite of what we were told by Greg and that we did not sign off on the plan used for construction. We did not receive the plan in the mail until after digging and framing were done. She replied that Hobert had already told us this couldn't be changed and that she would have to talk to him again about it.

She also said he was upset by what we had posted at ripoffreports.com. I reminded her that nothing we said was false. She said but we've addressed these problems and I told her that I had noted that on the site and would be updating it. I also asked her to tell Hobert I've had an engineer and my attorney look at the contract and that neither note elevation. I don't believe we should be charged for a failure to communicate between the designer and builder. I also explained our frustration and time put in to this due to errors at every stage due to lack of supervision except gunite. She said she would talk to Hobert and call me back.

Friday, August 27, 2004
Linda called me at 3:30 to tell me that Hobert would not waive $500 fee. Nothing else could be done until this is settled. The next step would be for us to talk to Hobert himself, so I asked her to have him call me. She said she would leave him the message.

Problems still not resolved
Faulty filter pressure gauge has not been replaced.
Cracked drain not replaced.
Blocks used to level equipment pad not replaced.
Pole cap and sac crete have not been replaced.
Equipment panel still incorrectly set.

Things still needing to be done that we have been told will be done after plastering
Remaining pipe will be cut back and fitted with returns.
Viper pool cleaner and other cleaning equipment will be delivered
Turbo cell will be installed on start up
Pool school will be scheduled.

We have now put more than 40 hours into dealing with these problems and supervising the construction since there is no supervisors are on site. We have over 100 pictures of the problems. If my husband charged them what he would charge a customer to supervise a construction project, it would cost them $1600 for the time he has put in here instead of working on his paying jobs. This doesn't even include my time or the huge amount of emotional stress this has put on our family.

We hope to have this pool finished by September 12 for our daughter's birthday, but I just don't see that happening. Since every stage so far, except the guniting, has had to be corrected, I just can't recommend anyone do business with this company. Things should be done correctly the first time, not always have to be redone.

We hope to have these remaining problems resolved, but we won't know until we speak to Hobert. If he's the good man he seemed to be when I met him, then I'm hoping he'll do the right thing and not charge us for their failure to communicate.

I'll update again when I know more.

Elizabeth
Sanger, Texas
U.S.A.