Toronto MusicMan

I have shopped at this store for the last 30 years (yes 30 years). No more after today. I brought an empty chlorine container for a refill today. They do have a sign at the front, new this year, that they do not want you to bring your container through the store. That I can understand the rationale behind. I walked outside and left it on their back bay. Then I walked through the store, empty handed to pay for the chlorine. I stopped at the water test station to have the water tested. The gentleman behind the desk told me it is not working. Then he asked me if I walked from the back. When I told I did, he ripped a strip of my back, telling me it is not allowed. There is no sign at the back saying this is not allowed. Furthermore, I do not see why you are not allowed to walk through the store empty handed. He said these are the rules. I told him they had no such rules for the last 30 years. I also told him I am handicapped and I am not walking back and forth outside the store three times just to get chlorine. He said I do not care, and if you do not like the rules do not shop here. I proceeded to the cash to pay. He told the cashier do not cash him out. Yes. They refused to sell me chlorine. I asked the cashier to call the owner of the store. They refused, saying the rude person yelling at me is the manager. His name is Blake. I again asked to speak to the store owner. They refused. Blake said I am on the phone with tech support. I left the store and walked outside to the back of the store to get my still empty container. By the time I walked back to the car, Blake came outside with his phone claiming he is on a call with head office Danny. Blake refused to hand me his phone to talk to so called Danny. He held it in front of my face and told me to not to touch his phone. I am not certain if the call was on speaker or if there really was a Danny at the other end. I asked if the person can call me back on my cell phone. No response except from Blake saying no (I do not believe there was anyone at the other side of Blakes phone). I got in my car and left I myself called head office. I got a voice mail for a Danny. Left a message. They never responded back. What an awful store with an awful customer service. I noticed the last three Google reviews mention the awful customer service and one specifically mentions Blake. One customer has been shopping there for 25 years. Slowly but surely customers who have kept this store in business for decades will all start shopping elsewhere. It takes years to build a loyal customer base and only minutes to completely ruin it. I am certainly not going back. I should note that the last few times I have been to the store, there were no customers. I can now see why. They are rude and obnoxious. This year I do not recognize one person that works there. They are all new. In past years there were some turnovers but many of the workers were familiar and they returned year after year. I am not sure if the store changed owners. But even that is not a reason to hire all new staff and get rid of all the old staff. The prices the store charges for the pool products are really high compared to other pool stores and the Big Box Stores. You add to this awful customer service, I cannot imagine them staying open for much longer. The first thing they need to do is to get rid of Blake and his I do not give a care and I do not need you to shop here attitude.

I have shopped at this store for the last 30 years (yes 30 years). No more after today. I brought an empty chlorine container for a refill today. They do have a sign at the front, new this year, that they do not want you to bring your container through the store. That I can understand the rationale behind. I walked outside and left it on their back bay. Then I walked through the store, empty handed to pay for the chlorine. I stopped at the water test station to have the water tested. The gentleman behind the desk told me it is not working. Then he asked me if I walked from the back. When I told I did, he ripped a strip of my back, telling me it is not allowed. There is no sign at the back saying this is not allowed. Furthermore, I do not see why you are not allowed to walk through the store empty handed. He said these are the rules. I told him they had no such rules for the last 30 years. I also told him I am handicapped and I am not walking back and forth outside the store three times just to get chlorine. He said I do not care, and if you do not like the rules do not shop here. I proceeded to the cash to pay. He told the cashier do not cash him out. Yes. They refused to sell me chlorine. I asked the cashier to call the owner of the store. They refused, saying the rude person yelling at me is the manager. His name is Blake. I again asked to speak to the store owner. They refused. Blake said I am on the phone with tech support. I left the store and walked outside to the back of the store to get my still empty container. By the time I walked back to the car, Blake came outside with his phone claiming he is on a call with head office Danny. Blake refused to hand me his phone to talk to so called Danny. He held it in front of my face and told me to not to touch his phone. I am not certain if the call was on speaker or if there really was a Danny at the other end. I asked if the person can call me back on my cell phone. No response except from Blake saying no (I do not believe there was anyone at the other side of Blakes phone). I got in my car and left I myself called head office. I got a voice mail for a Danny. Left a message. They never responded back. What an awful store with an awful customer service. I noticed the last three Google reviews mention the awful customer service and one specifically mentions Blake. One customer has been shopping there for 25 years. Slowly but surely customers who have kept this store in business for decades will all start shopping elsewhere. It takes years to build a loyal customer base and only minutes to completely ruin it. I am certainly not going back. I should note that the last few times I have been to the store, there were no customers. I can now see why. They are rude and obnoxious. This year I do not recognize one person that works there. They are all new. In past years there were some turnovers but many of the workers were familiar and they returned year after year. I am not sure if the store changed owners. But even that is not a reason to hire all new staff and get rid of all the old staff. The prices the store charges for the pool products are really high compared to other pool stores and the Big Box Stores. You add to this awful customer service, I cannot imagine them staying open for much longer. The first thing they need to do is to get rid of Blake and his I do not give a care and I do not need you to shop here attitude.

Our AC was not cooling this spring. We called a number of Heating/AC companies. They all recommended getting a new AC without even coming to diagnose the issue. They claimed our unit was old. All of them wanted to charge for a service call and a leak test on top of that to see if it could be repaired (over $500). None of them would apply the charge to a new AC unit if we decided to buy a new unit instead of repairing the old unit. Getting quotes and dealing with their salesmen for a new unit was a headache. You could not get anyone to give you an exact answer regards models and prices or the size of the AC needed for the house. Some claimed they would not install an AC above a 3 tons and some claimed they would not install one less than 4 tons. No one offered to actually come and look and determine the exact size needed. A lot of the quotes were for older models that have lower SEER ratings and they cannot be sold in the U.S. anymore and are not listed on the manufacturers websites. I suspect these companies were pushing the sizes they have in their warehouse regardless of the size you need. This all changed when I called Ali from Thermex. He came the next day to look and diagnose the unit. He determined it had a small leak in the refrigerant which he can fix. He also recommended changing one other small component in the AC as it was rusting. The total quote for the visit repair was very reasonable. Since the unit was almost 15 years old, I asked Ali to quote on a new unit as well. He recommended a 3.5 ton unit and gave me two reasonable quotes on newer models. We elected to get a new AC Unit. We agreed on an install date. He did not charge me for the service call. At the appointed time Ali and his crew arrived and installed our unit just in time for the heat wave next week. It was a pleasure dealing with him. He was professional, polite, and did a great job. His prices were very reasonable. He is also the owner so you are dealing with him directly instead of repairmen/ salesmen employed by the bigger firms. We highly recommend Ali and Thermex for your AC/ Heating needs.

I had a broken spring on a garage door. Smart Care arrived within half an hour, fixed the problem and suggested replacing the spring on the other door as the doors are the same age. Very pleasant, efficient, polite and great to deal with.

When we decided to get a safety cover for our pool three years ago, I contacted Kirk because of the excellent testimonials on his website and on Home Stars. Kirk answered my e-mail almost immediately. He was a pleasure to deal with. He gave me a very reasonable quote and then came to measure. He installed the cover at pool closing at the time we agreed on. The installation was great and mess free. They vacuumed all the debris from the drilling of the anchors. It has been three summers since and we just closed the pool for the year. The cover still looks great. It looks so much better (and safer) than the old tarp cover and water bags. It also made opening the pool in the spring a breeze as there are no dead leaves, worms and other debris and stagnant water to deal with. We have had a small issue with some of the anchors not opening or closing well. Kirk came back three times including this fall to fix them without charging us. Now that is a company that stands behind its product and has incredible after sales support. I highly recommend the Safety Cover Guys if you are looking for a hard cover for your pool.

I initially contacted Swim Clean to have a salt water system installed. They did come and install it after some delay and they did a reasonable job, although I had to take the control box off the wall and drill more holes to anchor it as they only anchored the top holes and it was not secure. I called Alex regards a leak in the pool. After repeated calls where he would not even commit himself to when he would show up, he finally came. Without doing a through test (He did not pressure test the lines), he decided the leak is from a tiny hole in the liner. I explained to him that it is impossible to lose 30,000 litres of water from such a tiny hole without seeing any water under the liner. He insisted that that was the problem. Of course that did not fix the problem. After multiple repeated calls, where he could not even tell you when he might come he finally showed up, charged me again, was rude about it, and decided that the leak is most likely at the return jet. He said he will have to dig and find out. I asked how he could not be sure as other companies guarantee to find the leak, he said it is an art not a science (it is not true, you can find the leak if you know what you are doing). I had another company come to do the repair. Sure enough, the leak was not at the return jet but few feet away at the return line. That doubled the price of the repair as they had to dig another part of the line to repair it. Subsequently I also had air in the filter and that company precisely located that leak in the suction line and repaired it. All in all not only I wasted a good portion of the summer dealing with unreliable amateur who had no idea what he is doing. It also cost me quite a bit more to pay for his two useless tests and for the additional repair when the leak was not where he said it was.