Trustworthy pool services in houston-- reccommendations

I've been developing and testing this opinion for the last 10 years but have finally come to a conclusion. The used car salesman/industry is not the slimiest, it is the pool industry. Everybody we've had outside of a guy that did it as a part time gig (who also warned us about the pool folk) has been a liar and a cheat. Skip to the last line if you don't want to hear a rant

over the last year I've had 6 different leak detection companies, 3 contractors come out and do fixes claiming the last guy was incompetent and they're the ones for the job, only to completely BS everything with an ongoing leak. One guy completely made up the report and was never able to be contacted again, didn't show up for the repair related to said leak which was already a clue. I ended up reading up on the plumbing and and figured out it was one of the skimmer lines and had someone manually dig it up and replace it after seeing a wet spot elsewhere. Something that cost me <500$ by learning with no experience wasn't solved by about $5K of diagnostics and fixes by these ****ers. Prior to last year also had someone else manage the pool, but then recently I took ownership of the cleaning. With the weekly guy , there was also some bogus charge, this needed to be replaced, chemicals which are largely bogus ( that I now know) had to be bought so the charge doubled. One of the guys was caught stealing our robotic cleaner.

I decided that the last guy we hired was worth paying more than the other guys because seemed like an honest family dude and paying him more was worth not dealing with the bullshit. Didn't take long to realize that we kept getting algae attacks because he was putting a fraction of the trichlor tabs and shock (during the chlorine shortage no surprise) and kept pinning it on other things (our surveillenace system caught him in case people think I'm making it up). I had a feeling he was ****ing around but the last obscenity came in the form of telling us it was 500$ to pop in the new cartridge filters (that I pruchased 1/3 of the price online after he was saying it was 300-400$). I was curious, so I watched a youtube video and opened the filter and popped the cartridges in 30 seconds, similar to replacing a carpet vacuum filter. He was gone the next day and didn't have an answer when I asked him why it cost so much for him to pop in a filter to demand 500$

Currently in the market for a sand filter and pool heater, but can't seem to find a company I trust based on reviews and how these guys recommend one another out of personal interest. If anyone on CF is involved in the pool industry/contracting that would really be my only point of trust, or recommendations from people on here. --thanks

 

I was there for a couple years prior (too long for that hellhole)

 

Mustard algae is the ****ing worst, we just did a treatment too. I’m doing a good job (knock on wood) but the equipment is something I can’t repair or replace