Reflections Aquatic Services Inc

Guys came in, said pump was bad. They replaced the pump with a less expensive model which broke two days after they left. So, nothing was accomplished in the end. We ended up filling in our koi pond to get rid of it.

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The experience was unsatisfactory at every level. This has resulted in almost $3,000 of negative impact for me and I will never do business with them again. Please see bottom for full calculation. Upon contacting them to address a leak in my Koi pond, they attempted to sell me their pond cleaning services. At multiple times I had to explain to them that my interest was in addressing the leak. The pricing structure is as follows: $56 travel charge just to show up. $88 for first half hour of work. $88 for each additional hour of work. After the first visit where they installed a bypass hose, it became very difficult to get any progress toward leak detection. The company had me try various at-home tasks, but would take several days to respond to my follow up requests. The second tech visit was a disaster. He spent several hours tinkering around with pond equipment (the pump) that was not leaking. He disassembled and reassembled the pump over the course of several hours. He also fixed a leaking hose that he installed during the first visit. The leak from the first visit was so substantial that I had thought that it was the source of the pond leak as the ground was saturated over a 10 foot area. The leak has been occuring for approximately 2 weeks since his initial visit. This was quite concerning considering $56 to show up + $88 for the first half hour + $88 for the additional hours per performed work. This was accruing quite a bill. By the time he left, there was no progress made. I kept checking the water level daily with an average water loss of 1 inch of water per day in a approx 14,000 gallon pond (small swimming pool size). When the person answering the phone did answer, I received several and quot;try one more thingand quot; tasks to attempt to trouble shoot the leak. After a few of those, the person on the phone recommended signing up for a pressure test. To this point, I had not received a plan of attack or a decision tree of potential steps to diagnosis. I was concerned about (i) the amount of time of the last visit, (ii) the lack of progress of the last visit, and (iii) the lack of plan going forward. Without a plan, I was concerned that much time would be wasted and that I would be accruing a large bill. I contacted Brad - the general manager of the business. I requested a project plan and/or decision tree moving forward. He did not respond for 2 weeks, so I contacted him again and expressed my frustration of losing an additional 14 inches of water (1 inch per day x 14 days) during the time that he did not respond. He explained that he does not provide plans of such nature and recommended the pressure test again. I repeatedly requested a plan, and repeatedly received the same response. Another assistant from Reflections contacted me to schedule something. I expressed my conern for the lack of plan, and for the lack of visibility of what the tech was doing in the last visit. Brad (the general manager) responded to me. As many of the communications back to me were either incomplete or unreasonably delayed, I asked Brad if his company even had the capacity to perform services. He did not answer this question and kept referring to his companies and quot;experienceand quot;. He also stated that they had recently gone from overwhelmed to more than overwhelmed with their work load. I took that as a and quot;noand quot; to if his company had capacity to assist me. He also then explained that the reason that the tech tinkered with the pump was to attach a nozzle for doing a different style by-pass. At this point, there had been approximately 30 days since the tech had visited and I had been pushing for an answer pretty hard for a few weeks to find out what he was doing. Even if that was the correct answer (installing the bypass nozzle), taking 30 days after doing that to tell me what he was doing cost me another 30 inches of water (30 days x 1 inch of loss per day). That is real money that I was having to pay for in my water bill by refilling the pond to keep the fish alive. At this point, I was getting no where with the company. Reflections did not seem to have capacity to handle my pond (and would not answer and quot;yesand quot; that they had capacity). Their delays in communication and lack of plan did not give me confidence that they could address the leak in my pond. I then contacted a competitor business to request a consultation. The competitor charged $75 total for 1 hour of consultation. This included travel time. The competitor diagnosed the leak within 10 minutes of arriving. Being that the pond was approximately 25 years old, he noted that the PVC material liner that was in the pond was defective. He stated that the PVC liners (the type that big-box home improvement stores sell) have a useful life of 7 years and then get hard and develop micro cracks around the folds that cause water loss. On the spot, the competitor gave me a project plan and decision tree of how to move forward with repairing the pond. This competitor has proceeded forward reasonably fast, very accurate, and with exceptional service. In total, I spent approximately 2 months dealing with Reflections and in the process lost approximately 60 inches of water from the pond (1 inch per day x 60 days) to which I had to refill to keep my fish alive and functioning, not to mention the wasted water from the incorrectly installed bypass hose. My pond is approx 14,000 square foot and is 6 foot deep. With rough math (60 inches/72 inches = 0.83 x 14,000 gallons = 11,666 gallons). That is 11,666 gallons of water lost during the time that Reflections had unreasonable communication delays, poor responses, and no plan going forward. Here, water costs $1.75 per cubic foot of water, which a cubic foot is 7.48 gallons. The final calculation is 11,666 gallons / 7.48 gallons per cubic foot x $1.75 per cubic foot = $2,729 gallons of water lost and refilled during this unsatisfactory and delayed experience with Reflections. Reflections billed me for the first visit and I paid it. It was a little less than $300. Between this amount and the $2,729 of lost water during the time of their unsatisfactory service, I have had a $3,000 negative experience with them.

They gave us a contract and it was $88 an hour. The guy who came out was Kyle and I really liked him. They need to be scheduled in advance and you cant call and expect them to come out right away. They are very clear in their contract. They were on time and friendly. They were helpful. They are slightly pricey but worth it for the service. I liked the company okay but I really liked Kyle.

I thought the technician was excellent. He answered my questions and explained what he was doing every step of the way. My pond looks wonderful. The owner of the company kept changing the appointment date and time on me and that was very inconvenient. I had the work done in late June and still have not received a bill and its September. I am more than happy to pay for the work but don't appreciate the delay in service and the delay of my bill. He gave me 3 billing options and I choose hourly service at 100 dollars. The technician was here for 3 hours. I believe this is what I will pay when I receive my bill. The owner was extremely hard to contact. I am not sure if I would use this company again.