We signed an agreement with Anthony & Sylvan, on 6/23/05. The original contract price was 62k. We have had continual problems with the pool leaking and have on many occasions attempted to have it corrected. In fact, last year we finally contacted our attorney to try and settle this matter. He was unable to even get a response from A&S. The following is a brief overview of our history.


Our early construction went extremely well, but the first concern was towards Oct. '06, when we neared completion and our final 5% payment was due. There were many open items and I spoke with the lady that handled payments, Dolores I believe. She assured me that 'they had taken care of us so far, hadn't they.' Well, after the last payment it became extremely difficult to get any work done on the remaining punch items. We would leave calls and not get a return call but I'd say it wasn't horrible, I was determined to be patient and polite.

That spring, we noticed a rather large leak coming out of the raised wall to the spa, at about 18in. and the underlying wall was 'weeping'. I called the supervisor over our construction, Rock. He came out and re-grouted the tile interior edge of the spa saying that it was most likely infiltrating from there. The leak continued. Over the next two months I continually called and could never actually speak with a person. I left multiple messages and none were returned. I finally called the GM, Chuck. He and the construction manager, Bill, came out to look at it one Saturday morning. Bill suggested that it was water infiltration from capillary action on the stone, saying, the flow from the spa in to the pool was rather weak and so ran against the wall and was drawn in. I suggested a pressure test but they both seemed this was the likely culprit and so I didn't push further. They said they would get a contractor to come over, smooth the stone that the water flows over, from the spa and re-mortar the stone on the wall fascia, which had deteriorated as a result. I think it's important to note here that we have a salt pool and the salt does seem to cause some of it's own issues in that regard. The sandstone installed seems to be constantly 'dissolving' In any event, a couple of weeks pasted and I never heard back. I had to hound them to get it going and about five weeks later it did. I can't be certain the time intervals, they never gave me any paperwork and I didn't have the foresight to document it. I'm sure they have records though.

So for several months everything appeared fine with the exception of a large buildup of calcium-like material on the tile; tile only directly under the wall. It was told to me, at the time, that was a normal thing and was only a little lime as a result of the efflorescence but to my mind resembled calcite; so hard that a pressure washer couldn't take it off.

We continued to try and get other items fixed without success. I won't go in to those but suffice it to say, we were beginning to become very, very unhappy.

Last year, I learned that Chuck was let go. That didn't surprise me since they had been many personnel changes at the Austin office, changes that left us very frustrated. In one year, they had three or four different people handling warranty work and I was told they were the only folks I could speak with. However, most of them NEVER returned my calls.

A couple months after the re-grout of the wall, the leak started up again but different. Prior to the leak, I'd already noticed that the wall was weeping and the mortar was degrading over its prior state. I called A&S without any return calls. I finally tried to reach the new GM, Pete. I left a few messages for him and finally received a return call Easter Monday(4/8) a year ago almost now. I spoke with Pete and he assured me that things were different. I was very direct with him. He told me he would take a look at our file and call me back in a couple of days. I waited and waited and finally called him a week later and left a message. He returned my call a week later and that process went on and on.
I finally called him on 5/20 and left a message saying that they had two weeks to do something or I had no choice but to contact our attorney. I received a call from him the next Monday. I spoke with him and he wanted to come out. He called back a week later and said he would be out that Friday. I told him I would meet him and he said it wasn't necessary. I called late that Friday to tell me that he wouldn't make it and would be by Saturday morning at 6:20 am. I never saw him, never heard from him again, etc. After that I contacted out attorney who contacted A&S and tried to get any sort of response without success. So, two and half years later, we still have a leak, the mortar is ruined and the salt system they shouldn't have installed with natural stone has deteriorated all the stone.

A month ago, I decided to avail myself one last time before legal proceedings. Since then I have encountered the same issues of unreturned calls, broken promises and I have only myself to blame this time.