Anthony & Sylvan Pools Reviews

Most recently, we had an issue and we reached out to our project manager. He told us to contact the warranty department but didn't give us any contact information for that. We decided to take care of it on our own. In the end, our project manager wanted a review. We finished in June and he contacted us in September and said that his compensation depended on the review that we would give him. My husband told me not fill it out because it was not gonna be favorable so I didn't. A couple of months later, the project manager contacted me and said, "If you don't do this review, I'm not gonna have money to give my family and children a nice Christmas." It was manipulation.

During the setup, Anthony & Sylvan forgot about us for a while. After the pool was done, they came out and did the initial setup. We have a salt system and they were supposed to come out 30 days later but they never came back out. After 30 days, I called them and they didn’t have anything scheduled for us so I had to wait an additional three weeks. When they finally came out, the salt system was not working so they had to replace it. There were some issues with getting our system finally set up so we were delayed over a month from being able to fully utilize the pool.

We have had four leaks in the pool since we've had it. So that's been a little bit of an annoyance. We're still dealing with a leak right now and we're not having a great experience with the pool because of the additional leaks. The team came out in April and we're now almost at the end of June and they haven't come out and fixed the leak. They had two months to come out and repair something. But even when they come out and fix this fourth leak, there'll probably be an additional leak somewhere that they will have to come out and fix again.

We did an in-ground pool with a spa and three waterfalls. It’s a 15 x 30-foot-long pool, about 11,000 gallons. It's a gorgeous-looking pool and overall, we love it. But we don't necessarily love Anthony & Sylvan. And now, going through the process, I understand they are more of a project management company versus a pool company because they contract all the work out to third parties. Their quality assurance wasn't as good as it could have been if we were dealing with so many leaks in the pool. Other people have been thrilled with their pools but ours is maybe an outlier. We have not had a great experience and even our salesperson didn't do a great job. I wouldn't recommend Anthony & Sylvan as a company to work with.

If you're searching for pool companies and are interested in purchasing a pool, the website is easy to navigate. But if you're a customer trying to find the warranty page, if you need to contact them and if there's a problem or an issue, that information is harder to find on their website. It isn't as upfront. Servicing the customers could be better there. There's probably a lot more they could do with their website. They don't do a great job retaining business and there's a lot of opportunity they are missing for continued service after the pool has been delivered. If I'm a returning customer, there's not as much information. Maybe things have updated, but at a time when I needed to put a warranty claim in, it was not the easiest thing to find. You have to search Google to find the page. Google to find the warranty page and then be on the website and navigate to the warranty page.

Anthony & Sylvan is a great company. They got a job from somebody I recommended them to. But one thing that I told that person is, "Don't pay in full. Write it into the contract that you're gonna hold back $10,000 until they finish everything to your satisfaction." That way, they don't have the same problems that I did, which is getting them to come back out and fixing some of the details that were overlooked in the process. I was a bit upset with them about the follow-up for some things. Once the pool was finished, there were a couple of things that I wanted repaired, but it took quite a lot of effort and time to get them to finalize some of those. They need to up their finishing detail and timeliness of finishing it. My project manager was responsive but the warranty department was not. But overall, they ended up fixing everything and it's great now.

In short, they did not do a good job at all. The Project Manager they assigned was inept and inexperienced. I tried to let the company know what was going on and they ignored me until the work was done and then they fired the PM. By then it was too late to fix the issues; poor tile work, plastered over cleaning heads, Lights installed in incorrect locations, skimmers not rehabbed; etc. Now they don't return my calls. I would suggest a smaller company with hands on management of your project. Do not trust they will do the work in a quality manner.

6. Now they have agreed that there is a leak, agreed that the pool was never plumbed correctly in the first place, agreed that they signed off on it anyway (which is fraud). They are now slow-rolling the repairs to the plumbing and my travertine deck (said it would take a week, but we are at over a month now). The manager literally wrote me an email that said "We don't have any control over our subcontractors' schedules". No joke.

No subcontractors want to work for them because they pay the lowest rates in the industry -so they only get the least experienced subs. Their "lifetime warranty" means that it will take a lifetime before they fix your pool.

Original Review: April 23, 2024

We got a few estimates for swimming pool renovation of including plastering and coping replacement and Anthony & Sylvan offered the best price for the work. The work started late last fall and we were brushing the newly applied plaster religiously as the weather turned cold. The pool looked beautiful and we were extremely happy with the progress so far. It all went south when the caulking crew came to fill in the one-inch gap between the coping tiles and the concrete sidewalk. They used compressed air and a grinding wheel to blow out all materials that had fallen into the gap during the re-plastering process as well as bits of ferrous material that presumably came from the grinding tool.

Now all these little pieces of grinding wheel and were sprayed onto the nicely brushed plaster and immediately started to rust. We contacted Anthony & Sylvan in the fall and heard that they were closed for the season and that someone would call us in the spring. No one called so we called Anthony Sylvan back again. Were we instructed to take pictures of the of the rust stained plaster and open a warranty claim with them. I sent the pictures and opened the pool. Of course the rust stains are still there and we have yet to hear from anyone at Anthony Sylvan.

After a never-ending list of excuses and delays, ranging from "we can't find concrete for your pool" to "we can't locate the tile you selected", along with multiple brand-new, top of the line equipment malfunctions, I am now writing this review on April 20th of 2024. The pool is still not complete. This is well over a year from the time I signed the contract with A&S. The project manager, Mat **, seems to be "bothered" by coming to my property. Imagine that. Someone gets a contract for a $300,000 pool and is "bothered" by it.

Communicating with A&S Pools is like pulling teeth. You constantly get shuffled around from scheduler to scheduler. You never seem like you're the priority to them, but instead, you're more of an inconvenience. Sometimes, weeks will go by before you hear from a single A&S employee. Your job site will sit, vacant, without any work being done, for the entirety of that time.

This company is dishonest, disingenuous, cookie-cutter, and absolutely the worst professional experience I have ever had in my 40 years of life. When you contract a company for a job such as this, you expect (and utterly demand) professionalism. You expect a certain level of care. A certain level of responsibility for the money they've taken from you for the job. What I received in this particular case was the exact opposite of those things. I am dismayed at the lack of professional standard. From Rudy **, to Harald **, to JR **, and all the way down to Mat **. This company should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. A lawsuit is being drafted in Pennsylvania court. I will be suing Anthony & Sylvan Pools for the entire balance of the $300,000 contract that I signed with them. I fully intend to win every penny of this contract back.

I had air conditioner tech come out and they said the unit was damaged and has been slowly leaking Freon. He said the damage happen when the unit was knocked over and crushed. The lines and the air conditioner coil were both leaking Freon. The leak was slow, which is why the full extent of the damage and that the unit would need to be repaired. The air conditioning company said due to the damage, they aren’t able to repair and must be replaced. This damage was done during the installation of my pool by your company. My general contractor says that this isn’t Anthony Sylvan Pool’s responsibility, but they did the damage. He claims that because I just realized the damage had happened, but it actually occurred in August that the company isn’t responsible. This is a newer unit, and was only three years old at the time of the damage. I’m willing to work with the company isn’t willing.

Original Review: March 27, 2024

It has been almost 22 months since we signed our contract w/ Anthony & Sylvan and we still do not have a completed pool. The pool was 80% complete last August, but significant items remained incomplete (completion of coping, wrong filter installed [pool requires a minimum 576 sq ft filter as specified in the contract, but they installed a smaller filter of 340 sq ft], programming of iAqua automation, rotary encoder to prevent operation of sheer descent while cover is on, loose wires sticking out of control box, payment of invoice from Rising Sun pools, completion of permit, etc).

In August, A&S lost key personnel and work essentially stopped on the pool. A box with pool equipment was left by the front door with no instruction and when I called to inquire about the equipment, we were told that a pool orientation meeting would be conducted by a vendor they had hired as they had no employees left that were qualified to provide the orientation. They then emailed a pool care guide. The day of the orientation the pool was not working and the vendor spent his time trying to get the pool to operate, so there was no pool orientation. The scheduler for Anthony & Sylvan has been very pleasant and helpful, but she is not knowledgeable about the pool systems, but she is the only one helping to complete the pool, so her help is greatly appreciated.

We finally had the pool coping installed earlier this month, but the other items remain incomplete. They have a subcontractor that has attempted to install the rotary encoder, but he has been unable to install and in the process has disabled control of "bubblers" in my pool so they now remain permanently turned on. A&S is providing no project oversight, hires subcontractors that are not familiar with iAqua Link or Jandy equipment/systems and do not provide their subcontractors with support, A&S has made no inspection of the pool and its systems to ensure everything was installed properly or in accordance to the contract. As the pool is still incomplete, they have not scheduled inspection to complete the permit (and the permit has now expired).

Anthony & Sylvan did not adhere to the contract - they installed the wrong number of stairs creating an awkward dropoff and installed lesser equipment than quoted in the contract. The lack of project management, project oversight, inaction, refusal to inspect the pool and systems, permit expiration / no permit, duration of project (22 months and still incomplete) is sheer negligence by Anthony & Sylvan. The loss of key personnel has significantly altered Anthony & Sylvan's ability to build and complete a pool. Would strongly encourage you to explore pool companies other than Anthony & Sylvan.

There's limited resources available to do it. And I suffer from the fact that I build things for a living. Much larger projects than pools, like hospitals. So, I got a little frustrated with Anthony & Sylvan just because I understood the process and didn't feel there was always as much attention as there could be. But the flip side of it is they delivered the pool inside a reasonable timeframe. And the work that was done was great. So overall, it's probably more my problem than theirs. From what I've heard, it's typical of the pool industry. Other than that, it was a very good experience.

A week or so later, I was home and it was the day of the concrete pour, and the concrete truck showed up, and nobody had dug a hole for the pier. I was talking to the company, Anthony& Sylvan, and telling the guys on site to make sure they call their boss. Eventually, we got it resolved sufficiently. Overall, it's a beautiful pool with a perfect layout and saltwater system. So, we're really happy with it.

Construction was great. It's exactly what I wanted, even though I didn't know that at the time. I just had some ideas about what I wanted in a pool. But they not only fulfilled that, they surpassed that. I got a lot more than what I had envisioned. I love it. I've recommended Anthony & Sylvan to several people. I've had people that have used them as a result of my recommendation and they're happy with them as well.

The problems I've got with the pool is in the result of the construction. When they made the pool, they pre-formed it. They didn't make it square. And it wasn't noticed because it's out in the middle of a piece of bare dirt. You don't notice that it's not square. And we lined up our outdoor kitchen with the end of that barbecue. It wasn't until we went to put pavers around there that we realized that the thing was out of square. So, we had to turn the pavers at a 45-degree angle so that you couldn't tell that it's not square. Otherwise, the lines would run off and it would look horrible. But now, when I'm sitting in the hot tub, I look at the outdoor kitchen, I see the line of the side of the pool which isn't square to the end of the pool, which is what the outdoor kitchen was squared to. A lot of people may not notice. But I see it and it's horrible. But I can't fix it now. It has all been done.

The PebbleTec wasn't also done right. It’s splotchy. They over processed it, took a lot of the color back out. So, it's gray. Not much bluish but there's spots of blue. They came in to try to even it out by taking the blue spots that are heavy out of there and they couldn't because it has been too long since it was done. They sent the guy from PebbleTec here. PebbleTec is coming out to see how good a job their customer did at making the pool. I'm sure that PebbleTec wouldn't say to their customer who gives them a lot of money, “You did a crappy job. You probably should do this over again.” I thought the guy would come out by himself so he would be objective without anybody in his ear which pays him a lot of money.

I wasn't here so they just buckled with my wife, said, “This is just dirt here and that's just dirt there." That's not dirt. It’s splotchiness. And when I started, when I was buying the pool, I was out in their shop and they were figuring out what to do, they said their pool equipment would be all Jandy. I've never heard of Jandy equipment before. But I always liked the one I used in my last house. It was a great system. This Jandy system has been horrible. It has been tons of leaks. And they’ve come out multiple times to fix them. And the pool heaters had to have service calls on it because it has problems. The circulation doesn't seem to be right. It's either not big in a pipe or pump to do some of the things it needs to do. The pool cleaner on the bottom, finally getting it to work a bit better.

The baja shelf is splashing up water. Adam, the supervisor, when that first happened, said, “That'll all work out. They'll just adjust this, adjust that.” There's no adjustment to it. It's just in there crooked. We're not happy with the product. It looks pretty. But I'm probably going to have the PebbleTec removed and put in a different surface if somebody knows how to do it. And I'm going to take all the Jandy pool equipment out and put in Pentair because the Jandy computer system on the phone is more primitive and crude than the Pentair one I upgraded in 2014. It's not that good a product.

The pool was complete last December and we had an issue with our spa. We notified them immediately that one of the jets does not work correctly. It wasn't until November that they finally sent out someone for the fourth time only because we begged them. They have determined that there's a leak in one of the jets and we're waiting for them to let us know when they're gonna come bust up the concrete and fix the jetter. That's been the only disappointment with going with them. It shouldn't have taken them 12 months to figure out the issue with the spa.