Hiring Catalina pools was the biggest mistake of my life!! If I had it to do over I wouldn’t hire them to walk my dog. Good luck getting a return phone call or email. I don’t even have a cell phone number to my project manager. Everytime he calls me it’s from the office and if he calls from a cell phone it comes up on called ID as “unknown caller”. People beware, you do not want this company.

Lack of consistency from office/ salesperson/ construction service manager

The design and construction of the pool were both perfect. Follow up customer service appears to be non-existent.

I’ve waited several weeks before providing information to this survey while waiting on a repair for leaking pipes between the pump and the filter. The customer service is virtually non-existent when it comes to getting a problem resolved. It is now November 21, 2019 and I’ve been calling and emailing Catalina since the end of October so that I can have this problem fixed. I had a winter pool closing scheduled for November 22 but that will have to be moved to an unknown future date. Bottom line, the customer service is horrible and if I had a do-over, I would not pick Catalina.

Catalina Pool Builder's communication is horrible.

The main reasons I would not recommend is very poor communication

Very satisfied knowing what they do professionally way thank you Catalina

Only if you are a patient person

I would rather pay more for a better company that is more responsive and use their own crew

Difficult question for us. Our answers to the below questions will explain this response.

Make promises they don't keep, they do not respond to issues or concerns in a timely manner, they don't give you all the info you need to know. They blow you off and tell you to take care of things yourself. It has been over a year and I am still trying to get them to address issues.

Once they started never really heard from Catalina . I had to call them each step to see when next process was going to happen sometimes it took weeks in-between

I referred a coworker and after the contract was signed, he could no longer reach anyone. After a month, he had to cancel the contract because his questions, concerns were not addressed. If I recommend Catalina, it would come with a disclaimer, just as the person did who recommended Catalina to me.

The customer service was very bad.

The entire process was poorly managed, there seems to be more concern with selling rather than building pools.

There was poor communication during the whole project and delays from the poor communication.

Catalina Pool Builders had good service for pre and during the installation, but mixed responses for the post-installation.

Catalina Pool Builders has poor communication skills. They also don't give proper receipts.

The customer service, timing, and process was horrific.

Catalina is the worst contractor I have ever dealt with my entire life. I am an Operations manager for a nation wide construction company and have been working at the same company for 32 years.

The pool looks nice but the service was bad. They did not meet any of the deadlines and had no follow-up. I was the one monitoring the construction of the pool and it took much longer to be finished. The quality of the pool is good but having the pool built was terrible.

The work still hasn't been finished and the lack of communication.

Not likely, I had no idea that I would be the contractor and have to deal with so many outside service provides.

Their communication skills needs to be improved. Takes to long for anything to happen. Had to sent multiples emails and endless phone calls to get something moving. Each single step was a nightmare.

Catalina pools has the worst customer service we have ever dealt with. Our pool is 1year old has multiple cracks & we have waited over a month & still nobody haa looked at it. So therefore it is June 2 & our pool is still not open. Extremely disappointed & would never recommend Catalina Pools.

It took over a year for Catalina Pools to complete the job. Workers continuously showed up without warning. Workmanship on coping and waterfall repair was good. Everything else was suspect. Pool pump did not work when trying to start pool.

We are completely satisfied with the quality of service and workmanship in the building of our pool. We would use catalina pool builders in the future.

We were rarely contacted during the install. We were left stranded and required a lot of coordination on our end. We did not expect that. Very disappointed! Would not recommend.

I went with Catalina due to them being cheaper than the competition. About 15%. That 15% was quickly eaten up by “change orders” to be more than the competition ($61k ended up at $85k). The initial sales call was great. My salesman was very straight forward and professional. Once the deal was inked however, I did not realize how much the power would shift into their court. The payment schedule of course is top-loaded in their favor. Once they get the final payment, you will have a very hard time getting anyone to talk to you again. My build was 4 weeks over the initial estimate and 6 weeks more than they said. I can swim now but it still is not done. Catalina has no project managers or at least none that you ever see. They stopped by for the initial dig and then they totally disappeared. They don’t do any quality control at all. I had minor issues along the way and I had to be my own advocate since they don’t have any onsite people. No calls to see how it went, no visits, nothing. They didn’t even show up at the end for a final build inspection. It is really sad at this apparent lack of care about their own product.Catalina also does not put any model numbers or anything specific at all into the contract for equipment. When it comes to pool equipment, the sky is the limit. But in my case, Catalina gave me the lowest model of just about everything that the pool brand sells (they standardize on Jandy). I got the lowest filter, even though my pool should have taken a larger filter being a 28k gallon pool. They also spec’d out a single speed pump even though every other builder told me in this day and age no one should be using single speed pumps. We also never talked about automation, which we ended up adding at significant additional costs. I am still waiting for promised equipment that has not been installed. They also still have not programmed my system and instead the company that does their startup told me to just run my pump on high all the time.Catalina contracts out all of the individual jobs. Once a contractor does their thing, you will never see them again. No real problem there. Most of the contractors that were on my build were very professional and the quality of what they did was top notch. Unfortunately, without exception, every single contractor had something bad to say about Catalina. They also gave me a price for additional decking that never made it into the contract and I ended up paying a much higher amount. We are still trying to settle this. I can tell that they simply want me to go away since they have gotten paid.The biggest issue is initially not knowing anything about pools. I should have done my own research before signing the contract. What I have learned since has been invaluable. I cannot say I would recommend going with Catalina nor would I use them again. I will also say that had I done better research, I would have paid significantly less for the same product.

I want to add one more thing. My pool failed the final county inspection due to the area around the pool not being graded or shored up. Catalina's response was basically, "Too bad, we got paid and are done.". I was promised multiple times and it is in the contract that they will do the machine grading but it never happened. I had this done on my own dime at a cost of $3500 and am in the process of suing Catalina for this money back. You can do a Montgomery County, MD case search and see my case. In addition, my deck is cracking in multiple places and I am told this is normal. My neighbors have pools as well one for over 15 years without a single crack in the deck. It is also looking like there is a problem with the plaster too that is just beginning I am seeing a lot of pitting.

Poor communication with customer and between internal departments; delays. Unsatisfactory oversight of subcontractors. Salesman assured 1/2” rebar throughout skeleton but 1/2” was used only in bottom, nowhere else. After sale, salesman NEVER followed up in process or at end to gauge customer satisfaction. No, I would not recommend Catalina.

They are extremely unprofessional. They do lousy work and refuse to make good on their commitments. Their customer service is ridiculous, the salesman thought I was a different customer for over a month and completely screwed up my permits. They built my pool too close to my septic tank, ruined our drain field, ruined my driveway asphalt, their concrete people hit my vehicle causing extensive body damage, they concreted over our jets (upon short repair) their person destroyed our $1500 pump due to negligence, they provided little to no support in rectifying issues. They told me to not pay the last start up fee as part of compensation for their major screw ups and then turned me into collections! That’s just a few reasons why I would NEVER recommend them. There are more.

The actual pool construction was very good. I thought the subcontractors did a good job. The reason for 4 vs. 5 stars is the "pool area" is more than just the pool. I built a retaining wall, sitting area, landscape etc. Catalina didn't really seem to embrace the totality of the entire project.

Excellent and timely work. We could not be more pleased. Catalina Pools gave us an extremely high quality pool. It was an incredible value. We certainly got our money's worth. The craftsmanship was outstanding. About a year later we had a question about the pool and specific equipment. So we called Catalina Pools and they were super responsive and helpful. We couldn’t have asked for better service or quality.

I think the quality of the pool is good, but communication and responses from the company was not consistent and I felt like I had to be the general contractor to keep the building process going.

Follow up has been a problem. I made contact about issues with uneven concrete in the pool that looks like stains and got no follow up other than “we will get back with you”. That was in July. Very disappointed.

I would recommend working with Stacey.

Areas Of Satisfaction

Areas Of Satisfaction - The pool looks beautiful and I think it was done right.

We are very happy with our pool that Catalina Pool Builders did for us. We can't wait for the summertime to begin. The crew at Catalina: Stacey, Kip, Brooke and Josh really worked with us thru the entire project. If we had a problem with something they made sure to correct it and get back on track. They are very professional and a pleasure to talk to on the phone. I would highly recommend them to others!!!!!

Great people to work with.

Areas Of Satisfaction

Areas Of Satisfaction - I was most satisfied with the design of the pool.

Very happy overall with the design, execution and quality.

Catalina Pool Builders did a good job.

Areas Of Satisfaction

Areas Of Satisfaction - Catalina Pool Builders did a super job on scheduling and keeping us updated on progress.

Recognized Excellence

Recognized Excellence - Everyone at Catalina Pool Builders provided us with exceptional service.

Areas Of Satisfaction

Areas Of Satisfaction - I was most satisfied that the crews were efficient and knowledgeable.

Areas Of Satisfaction

Areas Of Satisfaction - Our pool is GORGEOUS!

We love our pool and look forward to enjoyment for our family for many years to come. Thank you Catalina for responding to our many questions and concerns from Sales through production!

Everything went pretty well. The biggest issue I had with Catalina Pools is the miscommunication, lack or communication and no communication.

My project is still incomplete as the installers put in my filter incorrectly which required my filters to be replaced. That has yet to happen and the communication is awful so I'm doubtful I'll ever hear anything back from them. That means I have to put the time in to call and then communicate with the right people.

While the pool is beautiful, the process was not easy or seamless. There was a huge rift between us and Catalina when it came to communication. Communication was nonexistent. Emails and phone calls sent were left unreturned. Sometimes if questions were asked, they were answered weeks later or not at all. Josh was our point of contact and he was by far the worst. For this reason, I would pay a little more to go with another company.

I just feel like they don't return phone calls. They avoid your phone call.

Catalina has terrible communication. We have had several problems that have still not been corrected. Our estimated date of completion was the end of June 2017, and our pool was done finished until after July 4th. It is now the end of August and they have still not fixed mistakes that were made on their end.

I have to many outstanding issues with Catalina Pool Builders.

I would use Catalina Pool Builders again.