Cliff’s Pools & Patios

I’ve used them for pool service for a few years and their recent service went totally sour. Their inexperienced technician was unable to vacuum or correctly set the pool pump timer. He was continually making phone calls to the office to figure out how things work. When I complained to their service manager, I was treated rudely and his solution to my issues was to charge me $ 400 for an unneeded repair. I had their recommendation checked out by another pool company and it was found to be untrue. So much for the customer always being right. They need a massive staff training regarding customer service and honest solutions for inept service. Do NOT use them as your pool service.

The job went very well and I am totally pleased with the results. Oscar was fantastic. He was punctual, courteous, and paid attention to details. He explained to me that the merging of the new and old surfaces would not be a perfect match and he managed my expectations very well in that regard. He cleaned up after himself and when he left the job, the space was in «good-​to-​go» condition. I really appreciate that. I would give your guy a top-​box rating on this one. Many Thanks. I’m sure my wife will be as pleased when she sees it later this year.

We never hired them but just dealing with them was enough to post this review… NO GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE. They gave us a lump sum quote for a deck remodelling — we then asked them to break it down to see what were the separate material and labour costs, but they said they would not do that for any customer, take it or leave it. They also insisted that we use their own tiles for «quality assurance» aka rip clients off. We wanted to provide our own high end tiles and they stated that they would not use non-​CLIFF POOL tiles… Their one page CONTRACT stated they would not be responsible for any damages and would only clean up large debris. Which honest professional company leaves the job half done and shows no transparency to their customers??? Save your time and do not hire them…

I hired Cliffs to redo my pool, tile, pump and decking in the summer of 2013. When I went into the showroom, I felt confident with the sales people and what they said to expect. The pool reconstruction started in the summer and was followed by the decking, also started in the summer. There was a lot of rain, but, with that said my deck was not actually finished until the fall. Once the Eurotile was finished, I noticed bubbling in the painted grout areas. I had to complain multiple times before I had the guy back to fix it. A few months later the grout areas were bubbling and cracking again. Now it’s two years later and much of the grout areas have come off and SO much of the decking is cracking and crumbling. And, the pool motor leaks no matter how many times I’ve had it fixed, though you’d think the workmanship would last a couple of years. (I do maintain it every week) The workmanship of the pool itself is great and is totally fine, but the decking, that’s another story. Wish I had done more research.

I am submitting this review quite late as my pool was resurfaced, retiled and new pool equipment installed back in April 2014. The end result was everything we had hoped for and promised. Although, the end quote was much higher than we had originally started with, it was needed work to get the pool to where we wanted it to be since the previous owners left the pool in a horrendous state. Cliff’s staff were always very friendly and understood the situation that we were in and also worked with us to achieve what we wanted in our pool and now we have a beautiful working pool. I just want to thank you Cliff and your staff for the wonderful work even if I made this review quite late. We will definitely do business with Cliff’s pools again in the future should the need to arise.

Let me start that I started early November (8^th) to look for a heat pump pool heater … I was informed what type etc which was great… I was then sent an approval to pay 4000.00 to «order» the heater… I called them back and said I needed someone to do the entire job… Install heater. Pour pad … Electrical… They said no problem… First week of December now and said I have not heard from anyone and would like it for Christmas since we were having company… Call after call… Finally nope can’t do before Christmas … Well here it is the 10^th of January and calling them again to see what is happening.
The good part… Warm weather is coming… I hired a new company who is glad for my business…
STAY away from Cliffs… They are just like the other review stated… I really have NO idea why the have a good BBB rating.
Update… it appears they only want 50 percent deposit but owner calls after review posts to try to correct which is fine … and have me understand where the error was… and says they don’t do electrical but yet I have a voicemail from the office staff that says that they are trying to get an electrician out since I wanted them to do the entire job???
Very confusing… needless to say.

Let’s be clear: if you go with Cliff’s Pools and Patios, expect high price, poor service & zero accountability:
If like us, you are not satisfied by their work, they will tell you how much it is a privilege to get a call back from one of their multiple «managers» or the self-​important owner and all you will hear is that you have nobody else to blame but yourself and that you need to pay MORE to get it corrected !
As pushy as they are in collecting payment at every stage from deposit to the minute after each milestone, they will not take any responsibility… By the way, the reason for not taking credit cards should be a big red flag (they admitted that customers would dispute the charges after the work was completed, so that’s why they only take checks.!)
We paid more than $ 4 000 on having our pool resurfaced and ended up, 2 weeks after their work, with a pool that looked WORSE than before: all we heard back was every reason it was only our fault and, even better, that even if we were to pay him another $ 1 200 acid wash service that he had priced up, we were lectured by this small business owner as to why we didn’t get it and that he couldn’t guarantee that the scaling would not reappear weeks or even days later… ! Quite troubling also is the fact that we ere told that the pb was scale –according to their analysis of the water sample that we gave them (although they never shared the test results that they claim to have conducted) — when 2 other leading professional firms who came to look at the pool and test the water determined that it wasn’t scaling but metals that leeched out of the water to the new surface… ! Adding product to avoid this situation was supposed to be part of the initial Cliff Pool contract, something we never saw them do.
This company’s culture (and its owner’s) is simply that a customer is not smart nor skilled enough to understand (or accept) that Cliff Pools will take your money but will never stand behind their work or feel that they have an obligation to deliver results. On one hand, you will hear that these guys are practically rocket’s scientists or cancer doctors and you can’t come even close as it takes their 30 years of experience to fire-​up the pool, that just following their directions isn’t enough but on the other hand also said that 80% of their pools are not fired up by them!!! So, which is which ???
Although they give big lip service to customer satisfaction, Cliff and his mignons will make sure that you feel that it’s a privilege to even get a call returned by some of their numerous, very important little managers and that they have so many other more important customers to attend to; they will lecture/​patronize you by repeating their same unacceptable logic over & over again: if something goes wrong, there is no guarantee from their side and certainly a reason for which you did something wrong… The entire experience from bad scheduling, supervisors showing up after hours, to the unsatisfactory result was a terrible disappointment for a company that constantly brags/​claims to be professional and reliable.
So, just don’t waste your money and time, skip the self important/​condescending attitude and move on, like we did, to one of the many customer-​focused professionals who actually pay respect to their customer’s satisfaction, commit to delivering results and stand by the quality of their work.
We are glad we did and have made sure to share that real life experience with our friends homeowners across South Florida as well as the realty group who had initially referred Cliff to us…