Giving Tough News

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09/06/2019
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General,Swimming Pools

In most cases, installing a swimming pool is making a family’s dreams come true. And that is a fun part of being in this business. What isn’t so fun is going out to install the pool only to find out that the yard cannot accommodate the pool for one reason or another. Sometimes we find that there just isn’t space or that there are some other conditions that make installing the pool impractical, unsafe or both. Even worse are the cases where we start the excavation for the installation and find problems. That problem might be hitting an old burial pit, rock or an underground spring. Dig enough above ground and inground pools and you find your share of them. Sometimes the installation can continue and sometimes it cannot.

When the installation cannot continue is when it isn’t so fun as most of us hate giving bad news. Telling a customer that the pool they have been eagerly awaiting cannot be installed stinks for everybody involved. Sometimes customers take it well, and sometimes not so well. The disappointment is very understandable. But in these cases, we need the customer to understand that we aren’t happy about not being able to install a pool for them as well. It is hard to make a living selling pools you cannot install, but Eastgate Pools hasn’t built a very successful company over nearly 40 years by installing pools in places or under conditions that don’t allow them to be built correctly.

Thankfully, it is a pretty rare occurrence that we cannot install a pool that we have sold as we try to address many of the possible concerns before the pool is ever sold. But it does happen, and when it does happen, hopefully after the customer’s disappointment dies down, they will realize that we are trying to look after everyone’s best interests.