Payne Pool Professionals

BEWARE! Payne Pool Professionals installed a new in-ground pool at our home. We paid them over $60,000 for the project – on time and as contracted. Upon completion of the pool, the plaster was discolored. Five months later, there were four cracks in the plaster and gunite, and our pool was losing water at an alarming rate. Payne refused to address the problems, and we wound up paying $16,637 out-of-pocket in repairs. For a new pool. Attempting to recoup the repair costs, we filed a lawsuit in District Court of Baldwin County (Case Nr. DV-2023-900369.00). The court ruled in our favor and entered a judgement against Payne in the amount of $18,137. We have never sued a company before and were astounded that Payne refused to stand by its warranty and disappeared. They have refused to acknowledge the court's judgement and we have had to hire more attorneys to collect. The judge's ruling was: "It is ORDERED and ADJUDGED that a judgment is hereby entered in favor of the Plaintiff, [name redacted], and against the Defendant, Payne Pool Professionals, LLC in the amount of $16,637.60, plus $1,500.00 in attorney fee reimbursement, plus costs of Court and interest." Payne does not honor their warranty, instead claiming the customer does not properly maintain their pool. In our case, nothing could be further from the truth as we had a reputable (in business for over 25 years) professional pool company performing weekly maintenance from the time Payne completed the pool. A bevy of Better Business Bureau complaints ([*** Link removed ***] filed against Payne show some consistent things about the company: • Their work is suboptimal. • They cut communication and do not follow up in a timely manner. • They often “blame” the homeowner for not properly maintaining their pool as the reason they will not honor a warranty. We cannot warn you strongly enough against hiring this company. Photos posted on Google Reviews.

Payne Pools from Gulf Breeze....is horrible. We informed them that we had a sand bottom pool from the start. They said they could do sand bottom pools and then they were surprised when it was time to do the job, to discover I had a sand bottom pool. “This was their first and last.” says Payne Pool. They No longer do them. Attention to detail... I don’t think so Sold us on the Tile track...no longer do them? Good communication .... not at all! We had to chase them down. They cut the liner and hid it behind the tile track.... we found it... took 4 months to “fix”... and over 3 complete drains and refills of the water ($900 and over 80,000 gallons of water wasted) because they could not get it right. Left us with a liner that is not fitting properly around the stairs with wrinkles and a very uneven bottom. Our Polaris cannot clean these craters because they are so deep. DO NOT BELIEVE THIS COMPANY!! THEY DO NOT DELIVER ON THEIR PROMISES.

Payne Pools installed a new liner for me in May 2019. In December I advised them of a problem with the liner. There is a one year warranty on the liner and installation. Despite several text and phone calls and assurances they would fix the problem. No one called me or came to look at the problem. Apparent they do not honor their warranty or their service.

My liner was replaced by Payne Pool Professionals in March. In April I notified them of several issues (wrinkles, track defects, cap missing on stair strip,water in light, loose tile, gaps.) Around the same time I notified them of a leak. Sanders said someone would be out within 4 weeks. Six weeks passed. I contacted them him again. Steve came in June. He fixed the missing cap/cracks, sealed both lights, said he would monitor the leak and come back for the wrinkles. He said there wasn’t much to be done about the track. I contacted John numerous times about the persistent leak and wrinkles. I saw Steve a few times up until early July. My son texted John on my behalf in August to check the status. He replied that they were working on it. Several weeks passed. Hadn’t heard from anyone. In September my son texted John again. He replied that he had talked to me and thought the leak was fixed. I was shocked! A leak hadn’t even been found, much less fixed. John said he would send divers. We waited another week. No divers came. At that point (almost 5 months later) that I called Navarre Leak Detection, who came the next morning. They quickly found a “very large” leak at the bottom of the steps from what appeared to be a stretched screw hole, and which was determined to be the fault of Payne Pool Professional’s. I hadn’t been in the pool so I decided to get in to take a look from the inside. I discovered large portions of loose track that aren’t screwed down. There are large gaps between the track and wall, large enough to fit half of my hand behind. The skimmer at the deep end is recessed and not in line with the tile and the screws at the top of both skimmers have rusted. A couple of places are broken and have been repaired with some type of epoxy. There are pebbles, rocks, divots,bubbles and other rough and uneven areas under the liner in many areas of the pool. It is hard to capture all of the defects, especially in the deep end because my light has filled back up with water and no longer works. I didn’t have any of these issues before the liner replacement. I imagine that thousands of gallons of water leaking underneath the pool for almost 5 months is a factor. I contacted Sanders to inform him that the leak had been found and of the additional issues. He sent Robert and Steve over to meet with my son. My son tells me that Robert says I’m being “nit-picky” and that the defects are normal. A resolution was not reached and I’m told Robert stormed out. Steve said they would be in touch. A couple of weeks passed. We heard from no one. My son texted Steve to see if he had talked to Sanders about a resolution. Steve replied that there WAS a resolution and that he would be calling the next day. He texted back a couple of days later to say that Sanders offers no resolution. Sanders did send me a check to reimburse me for leak detection. After seeing my negative review on facebook, Robert commented and ask me to contact him the following week when he would be back in town. I called and left him a message. I asked that he return my call if they were willing to fix EVERYTHING. He never called me back. I took the pictures to a local pool company and talked to two professionals. They didn’t want to involve themselves but said they believe the pebbles and rocks will eventually make their way through the liner. One of them made the remark “I’m glad we didn’t do this job.” When Sanders came in January to give the job estimate he said he would put a new track on because with age they tend to get brittle and whatnot. However, the old track was put back on. The quote and invoice state “Replace” track. I asked Sanders about it after the job was completed. He said they were worded incorrectly, and that he would not refund the money. This is the first time I’ve given a negative review of any company. I'm shocked at the lack of professionalism over the past SEVEN MONTHS, the quality of work performed, and that Sanders will not honor his warranty and fix my pool.

It was great! They did an awesome job. They were really quick and got the job done within a week and a half.

Only employed their services for 2 months. Service people did not show up two times in last month. To be fair, Sanders (manager/owner) seemed professional but was not in control of at least one of his employees. I'm sure this problem has now been corrected.