Five questions to ask before you book a pool service
The exact wording to use when you ring around, what a good answer sounds like, and what should make you keep looking.
Pool servicing is sold by the visit, and almost nobody tells you what is in a visit. That is where most of the disappointment comes from.
These are the five questions worth asking before you book anyone, including us. We have put down what a straight answer sounds like, and what should make you ring somebody else.
1. What exactly is included in a visit?
Ask for the list. Not the price — the list.
A good answer names the jobs: water tested and balanced, baskets emptied, walls brushed, floor vacuumed, filter checked, equipment looked over. It should also say what is not included, like chemicals beyond a certain amount, or repairs.
A bad answer is “the usual” or “whatever it needs”. That is not a scope, and when the visit turns out to be twenty minutes of skimming, there is nothing to point at.
Our version of that list is on what a pool service should include.
2. How often will you actually come, and on what day?
There is a real difference between “fortnightly” and “fortnightly, on a Tuesday”.
A pool under heavy trees can need more visits than one out in the open, and a pool in full sun burns chlorine faster. So the honest answer depends on your pool. What matters is that they will commit to a pattern and tell you when it changes.
If the answer is vague about days, you will spend the summer not knowing whether they have been.
3. What happens when something breaks?
Pumps fail. Salt cells wear out. Somebody has to deal with it.
Ask whether they repair equipment themselves or hand you to someone else, and whether they will ring you with a price before touching anything.
Salt cells are the usual one. They are consumable — they wear out on runtime, commonly quoted at around ten thousand hours, which for most pools is a few years — and replacements are not cheap. A service that treats that as a surprise is not one that has been paying attention.
4. Are you insured, and who is actually turning up?
This one people feel rude asking. Ask it anyway.
You are giving somebody a gate code and unsupervised access to your back yard, often while nobody is home. It is reasonable to know whether they are insured and who will be standing there.
A good answer is direct. Any hesitation is information.
5. Can the price change once you have started?
The most common complaint about trades in Australia is not workmanship. It is delays, no-shows and the job not being what was agreed.
So ask plainly: is this a fixed price per visit, and what happens if you find something that needs fixing?
The answer you want is that regular servicing is a fixed price, and anything beyond it gets quoted and approved before work starts. If the answer is that it depends, ask what it depends on until you get a number.
When you are ready to compare, ask us the same five.