Insurance Horror Stories: Scared Straight! With Sean Reardon UPA

A pool route looks peaceful from the curb, but the work sits where chemistry, electricity, plumbing, and customer trust collide. We brought on Sean Reardon, the insurance broker serving the United Pool Association, to unpack the real risks pool technicians face and why generic coverage so often misses the mark. From the UPA’s origins as a mutual support network to the evolution of group policies built for technicians, we explore how smart coverage, good training, and honest reporting can turn worst-day scenarios into manageable claims.

We walk through claim stories that stick. A heater installation near a shared wall led to alleged carbon monoxide poisoning when someone powered it up before venting was complete—an expensive reminder that pollution exclusions can swallow a “normal” pool tech job unless your policy is modified. A veteran pro mixed the wrong chemicals and triggered leaks across a skimmer line, proving that one rushed moment can mean weeks of remediation. A new hire “frisbeed” trichlor tabs into a dark-surfaced pool and branded it with round stains. And in a painful mix-up, chlorine meant for a dirty fountain ended up in a koi pond, wiping out prized fish within an hour.

Sign up for UPA Insurance here:

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• UPA’s origin as chapters covering routes and sick leave
• Why group insurance tailored to pool techs saves money and risk
• Pollution exclusions and how endorsements change outcomes
• Carbon monoxide claim and the importance of duty to defend
• Chemical handling errors and skimmer line damage
• Training gaps leading to “hockey puck” stains
• Koi pond chlorination loss and rapid response
• Cameras, transparency, and reporting incidents early
• Practical habits to avoid co-mingling and mislabeling
• How to join UPA and find the sign-up form

The easiest way to find the sign-up form for UPA is to go to my website, swimmingpoollearning.com. Again, that's swimmingpoollearn

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Liability Talk
• 3:23 What UPA Is And How It Began
• 6:48 Group Insurance Built For Pool Techs
• 10:08 Broker Role And Market Challenges
• 12:43 Why Standard Policies Fall Short
• 15:33 Pollution Exclusions And Real Risks
• 18:48 Carbon Monoxide Claim Breakdown
• 23:03 Duty To Defend And Indemnify

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:26

We're going to talk about, of course, the reasons we get a reliability for us for three people as well. This episode where John talks about the three typical community. And how to, of course, avoid these colour. Or the number of my coaching group can be even lower rate. Protect your business and your peace of mind.com. How are you doing?

unknown: 2:32

I'm doing well.

SPEAKER_00: 2:33

I'm doing well. How are yourself? Good. How's uh so what is exactly is your role over at UPA?

SPEAKER_01: 2:39

I don't know if um good question. So I mean, as you, I guess over time probably gotten to realize, I mean, the you know, UPA United Pool Association, a trade association, you know, representing the interests of uh pool technicians out there. Um, my role, I actually work for an insurance brokerage, uh Hub International. And uh so probably for the last 15 years, I've been the insurance broker for the UPA. And so uh I my role really is to handle the insurance interests of you know, what the UPA is currently doing, what they're looking to get into and uh it and managing that, which as you probably have seen or listeners have heard, I mean the insurance landscape has been challenging. So it's uh you know takes a little more uh uh I guess uh involvement than it did, you know, 20, 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_00: 3:26

Yeah, for sure. The history of UPA, though, they're not really just a insurance company, they're actually a group of professionals that get together.

SPEAKER_01: 3:36

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so it's it's it's a really rich history. Um, it goes back before I was even born. So it's just uh back into the 60s, you know, a group of uh smart techs kind of got together and a bunch of single polars and said, Hey, uh, you know, I want to take some vacation. And you know, you know, when you're in California, you're you're you're servicing pools all year. So it's uh, you know, it can be challenging just trying to get away with your family, whatnot. So they said, Hey, why don't we just form a group? And uh, you know, when I'm taking a vacation, you cover my pools. And so it's kind of uh uh uh a really uh you know general sort of sick route coverage, except for vacation purposes. So much funder thing than sick route coverage, right? And uh over the years, you know, uh it evolved. So obviously, you know, groups were formed with the United Pool Association, which we call chapters, and these chapters uh evolved to the point where they were providing sick route coverage generally for the guys. So it was sort of like uh a built-in disability, you know, for uh for taking care of their members and vacation and uh really just to help each other out. And and then probably about the 70s, David, uh um, you know, the insurance uh uh idea came up and said, hey, we you know, we could probably be doing this a little better. And so uh again, there was uh some changes as far as the organization was concerned, but in its infancy, uh uh smart brokers, smart board members from the UPA put together a uh what you call sort of effective a group policy. So, really economies of scale to help uh help put something together to help guys save money on the insurance, and probably more importantly, Dave getting an insurance policy that's geared for what our techs are doing. And so so yeah, and then over the years that's evolved. Um, and you know, I'd like to say that I could take credit for a lot of this, but it's really just uh all the hard work was done early.

SPEAKER_00: 5:29

Yeah. Oh, I guess I got ahead of myself, but I'm joined by Sean Reardon of UPA. And Sean, any relation to the former mayor of Los Angeles?

SPEAKER_01: 5:40

No, good question. I uh I I get that a lot. It's actually spelled differently. So thank you to help us island, but uh um I'm R-E-A-R. We're of course, you know, the mayor, R-I-O. But I did used to work downtown, so I'd I'd uh have breakfast at that spot, uh in his bar next door. So it it was yeah, rich uh rich history. If I was related to him, I probably wouldn't be working right now.

SPEAKER_00: 6:04

Right. Yeah, I don't think people know, but he had like a famous restaurant in downtown, right?

SPEAKER_01: 6:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was off of uh fig and ninth, I think.

SPEAKER_00: 6:14

Um yeah, so yeah, so I think we're gonna talk today more about the insurance, of course. That's one aspect that we're gonna discuss. And I guess we can start by saying they'll hear it a little bit later in the podcast, but there is a little plug for you, people about the insurance membership. We'll we'll get to that too, how they can join. Uh, but let's go over some interesting things. A lot of people want people like stories, they like to hear things that have happened to people that have gone wrong. Um it's a good way to prevent them from making those same errors. I think you know, you've heard this quote, you know, learning from your mistakes is wise, but true wisdom is learning from other people's mistakes.

SPEAKER_01: 7:01

I I I use that often when we have our meetings. I I I except I I butcher it, but it's uh I'd much rather learn from others.

unknown: 7:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:12

Absolutely. And we've got uh, I mean, I'd like to say um you know, it's great for content. We've got a lot of claim stories. Obviously, we try to prevent the claims from occurring to begin with. But um what I what I would say, and I'm happy to get into these scenarios, David, but I want to point out first, if it's okay, you know, what your listeners are involved with. So the service repair technicians, it's a very unique space. I mean, and I I have a lot of respect for these folks. You think of everything they're touching, uh electrical, plumbing, chemistry, you know, uh, you know, mechanical uh processes. It's a very complicated business that your listeners are involved in. And the insurance policies, the way they're written, are not geared for that. And so what this presents is a challenge for the buyers to get an insurance policy that is actually structured for what they're doing. So it's covering what their exposure is. And I'll give you a really real life example of this. Uh, all insurance policies have a what they call pollution exclusion that's buried in there. And uh it's a very broad exclusion. And and what uh the intent is is to basically not cover situations where you start thinking about those, you know, chemical spills, overturn trucks, those big kinds of incidents. But that can get really broadly interpreted to do a lot of what our guys are doing. You know, you think about it, you know, managing water chemistry, it's all about chemicals. And we had a situation where one of our techs was hired on as an uh independent contractor to install a heater. And so he uh he was hired by another service company, he uh was installing the heater in an apartment complex. That heater was in a uh closet that actually shared a wall to one of the units. So as he was installing the heater, he uh was missing some parts. So he had talked to the property, talked to the uh on-site manager, said, Hey, just make sure nobody turns this thing on. I'll be back shortly. And of course, uh Murphy's law, somebody turn us on. So the heater was not vented appropriately at that point. And so, like, whoever turned this heater on, the tenant who was there ended up uh allegedly getting carbon monoxide poisoning, survived. And for a lot of people that know about carbon monoxide, they don't necessarily die, then you can have very long-stem effects, and it's uh it's a serious issue. What happened was the service company got sued. And the service company was going through it, found out that their insurance policy stuck to this insurance, this uh pollution exclusion and barred denied the coverage. Um so that service guy had to go out and hire an attorney who then was actually realized, hey, you didn't actually install this, you hired a guy, our guy. And so they actually filed what's called a cross complaint for bar our guy into it. And so our guy's insurance policy responded to this. Um, it ended up only selling for about$40,000 uh with another$40,000 in legal fees, which is always the case. Um, now this again, the to highlight here is that had we not modified that exclusion, it's entirely possible the end result would have been the same for the guy who'd hire him, you know. And these are the ones that keep people awake at night, you know, when you get the serious bodily injury claim that can be financially devastating if you get pulled into this. And uh to highlight this, you know, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners know this, David, but the agenda liability policy, you know, really doing two things. You've got a very broad duty to defend. And that's one of the things that's the big deal is you want that insurance company to basically hire the attorneys and take over. Because I mean, nothing's more daunting than getting served and you know, and really not knowing what to do. And then the second part of that is to actually what they call a demnify but pay the claim. So whatever the damages are to make the claimant whole. Um now that duty to defend is very broad in California and broad in a lot of states. Um, however, you know, these exclusions can and do bar coverage in a lot of cases. And so it really becomes important to, at a minimum, just talk to your broker to know, hey, am I okay here? And so that's one of the reasons we structure this. So that's just a kind of an example of why choosing the right policy is important.

SPEAKER_00: 11:32

It's it's just like any business center. I was at a restaurant last week, and there was a lady getting up with her baby, getting out of her seat, and her purse got stuck on the the baby seat and almost fell with the baby in her hands onto the floor. And I was in my mind, I'm thinking that would have been a pretty big claim for that restaurant, you know. Uh well, it was raining, and all these would have so haven't charged, of course, for things like that happening. Um, you're running a business, even though it's not a physical building in most cases, just imagine yourself owning a restaurant as a restaurant owner with a liability that's called about everything, food for example, someone falling, um, you know, not having the handicapped access, all the things that they have to deal with. You deal with it in a certain way on a pool route. And so I think the mindset should be yes, I am running a business, and yes, I do need coverage for my business. And it really is something that should not be a second thought.

SPEAKER_01: 12:31

Yeah, no, I'll tell you, and this one uh I think is really, really important because earlier we had one a few years ago, and it was uh unfortunately a situation where they were using trichlor at the pool, and uh he ended up using tal hyper and uh ran through the skimmer line. And for uh, you know, I'm sure I'm sure all your listeners are aware, but you know, tal hyper being oxidizer, it it uh doesn't play nicely with trichlor. Um we ended up uh fortunately the homeowner was uh in the house and the nobody got hurt, but it was uh ended up uh making a pretty nasty reaction. It ran to the skimmer line, so we ended up with multiple leaks in the skimmer line as well. Um so it it it ended up being a clean process, it was extremely lengthy. Uh the you know, trying to figure out ascertain where the actual leaks were, had to had to remove portions of the deck. It was uh a real mess, but it really highlights the fact that uh you know, the amount of oversight and regulation with respects to chemicals and how you know you're you're really depending on what you have in the back of your truck, is is uh it it can really cause some catastrophic issues. And so, and this guy he had been doing servicing pools by the way for over 20 years. So it wasn't like he was just didn't know what he was doing, and and uh it was just complete oversight, grabbed the wrong uh uh uh you know jug and did basically uh went about it all incorrectly. And but again, no no injuries, but it was one of these things that uh just as a highlight, as a reminder to pay extra attention, especially when we're driving, you know, God forbid, you know, you had the co-mingling in the bed of your truck, it could, it could potentially cause problems. Um a funny one, uh you know, we had a we had a guy who had uh hired a new employee and uh gave it, you know, gave him the uh pools to go handle, didn't do a very good job training him. Uh the homeowner ended up calling uh you know our our guy uh a while said, you know, I've got these like eight hockey puck stains at the bottom of my dark gray pool. And uh and so you know the guy was telling me, he said, Sean, I I I was I could not figure out what was going on. So I finally asked my employee, I said, Hey, what are you actually doing? You know, it turns out the guy was taking the trifle tabs and just frisbeeing them into the pool. So it was no training, it didn't explain the whole floater thing. Um, so he was just throwing these things into the pool. And you know, it was yeah, definitely, I don't know, it was kind of one of those like head scratchers of like, oh, okay, I guess if you didn't know any better, maybe it would just seem like a logical thing to do.

SPEAKER_00: 15:20

That's not logical now that you say it like that, because it sounds like they would just dissolve like peptobism, you know? Alkazelsa, I should say. That's the one I was thinking of. So yeah, it makes sense. You have another anything else unusual?

SPEAKER_01: 15:36

I'll tell you, yeah, this one was uh um uh an interesting one. We had a guy, this is kind of one of those kind of good good deeds never go unpunished, but he he was actually servicing a fountain and he got to the uh the he was in the back just to kind of check the uh the pump, and the pump lid was uh translucent. He saw that it was just algae all over, and he's like, oh my gosh. So he you know put some chlorine in and uh and then was walking around to go kind of scrub a fountain. And as he gets to the front, he realizes they have a koi pond. And so he had actually chlorinated the pond on accident. So he got out there and quickly realized, oh no. So he uh grabbed uh you know some five-gallon buckets, he uh you know, put some fresh water in, tried to pull these koys out, called the homeowner, said, Hey, who's who's handling your fish? And I guess the fish guy came out within an hour, but unfortunately, 26 koys were eliminated by by this.

SPEAKER_00: 16:32

And people don't know those are like if they're big enough, they're like$600,000,$2,000 each, right?

SPEAKER_01: 16:38

Yes, they are very expensive. Now we were fortunate. I don't know why the math worked out the way it did. It ended up being about$8,000. So they were actually a probably like younger fish or or something along those lines. But he was just, I mean, I mean, obviously he felt terrible. And you know, but it is one of those things where you're just kind of not thinking exactly clearly, and you're trying to do the best you can to help. And you know, of course, there you go. So it was uh, yeah, and actually it was uh the first claim we had when we had moved to a different insurance company. And I remember the uh underwriter called me and gone, what what? I don't understand. And like trying to explain this whole process to them, but it was yeah, yeah. That I mean the last thing I want to highlight, David, if if okay, if we're not too far in time, um uh I I just want to point out one other thing quickly. It was uh uh for those folks that aren't using, you know, employee subcontractors, we had another incident. This was actually in Vegas where um uh the the employee was in the back of the pool, and he ended up bumping his pole against um some glass art that they had over the pool. And so he ended up shattering this. It was like a kind of a nice looking, uh, you know, kind of like a Venetian-looking glass, like, you know, flower. He had basically hit it, it broke, ended up in the pool, and the guy left the glass in the pool, didn't say anything, left. The homeowner ended up realizing that something was off. He had cameras in the back. And so he saw he had this whole thing on his uh camera of what the guy had done. And of course, you know, it was obviously extremely upsetting because you know nobody knew because the the the employee didn't say anything. But I um uh and thankfully nobody went swimming and with you know glass shards at the bottom of the pool. Um, but it kind of highlighted the uh kind of the reminder, you know. I know most all of us are always trying to do the right thing, you know, in the back of the pool, but you know, bear in mind that you know most of the time these homes have cameras, you know, and people people are nosy by nature. So so in this case, it's good the guy was nosy, but in some cases it's uh it it's just uh a reminder that that you often are on camera, you know. It's just uh um, you know, most most folks do the right thing, want to do the right thing, but it's just a reminder that, you know, if you're not doing the right thing, there's usually somebody watching.

SPEAKER_00: 19:09

Right. You know, it's really hard out there too. Like uh I had an incident where one of my customers was dog sitting. I didn't know this, and I usually walk back there. His dogs are Australian shepherds, they never run out, no big deal. But this dog was like a German shepherd mixed breed. Open the gate, he comes charging out and runs down the street. There's no one cuts this dog. So I'm thinking, okay, there's no way no one was gonna know that I want this dog out. You know, those car does whatever everyone goes back there, homo is not there that often. So I was I had a moment of almost uh breaking my conscience, I was gonna be like, just let it go. But I fucked the home when I'm like your dog thing, and the dog just took it off for himself. Uh I would apologize. I don't worry about the dog, I was bought for. We'll find it, we'll get it, we'll get it. But you know, I can see how that can happen to a dog that books the guys throwing over the pool and doesn't want to take responsibility because you just have that moment where it's like what's a big deal and what's supposed to be a club and what are they gonna do? Um, sometimes you just have that lap. So it's unrespondable. It does happen to everyone's human being for have like a lap of consciousness where you just try to like not cover it up but don't disclose it. And so I think um those incidents that we mentioned can't lead to a lot of liability, like the glass on the bottom, for instance, or you're letting a dog out was hit by a car and I'm liable for it. So I think the lesson here is always think about the liability by not disclosing that.

SPEAKER_01: 20:51

Wow, well, absolutely. I have no problem.

SPEAKER_00: 20:54

So it does happen. We're all human. This is the business of humans, and uh, we make mistakes. I've had my service cart with acid tripping on someone's deck without knowing. Fortunately, it was an old house, and I learned my lesson from that point on to make sure that, you know, I double-checked my service card, but these are all learning lessons. Um, but I would call me asked for you. Every time I would use my acid, put it in the pool or put it back in your coat or put it on the score, like never put it on the dock. These are all clips of the Google, you know. And these are all things that if you're not trained properly, you might be throwing tricks in the pool, or just putting the acid on the dock, and it's gonna leave that little half moon shape, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 21:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 21:39

Um so many little details in the industry that unless you're trained by someone hands-on who's on the ground, you're gonna make these mistakes.

SPEAKER_01: 21:48

It's just three. I mean, yeah, I think uh you know, mixing uh myriadic acid, you know, is it water first, acid first, you know, and of course, you know, but you should know the answer to that. But it's uh, you know, if you're a young kid, you know, it's uh, you know, just the training level. I I I think you hit it on the hill.

SPEAKER_00: 22:07

Yeah, yeah. So I think it's great that the insurance is there um and it should be utilized by everyone. And um, if they've heard the commercial during the podcast about it.

SPEAKER_01: 22:16

But I will say to bring everybody to ease, everybody that's listening, I would say 80 to 90 percent of you, just by law of large numbers, will never have a claim. Now, look, get the insurance because you don't want to be the 10 or 15 percent that doesn't have insurance, but it's uh it's the way it works. So Jake, I very much appreciate having me on. Yeah, thank you for the partnership.

SPEAKER_00: 22:39

The easiest way to find the sign-up form for UPA is to go to my website, swimming swimmingpoollearning.com. Again, that's swimmingpoollearning.com. And if you just scroll down, just from the opening bar, you're gonna see a link directly to the UPA Google form. Fill that out for the quick box you will go or if you go for a week, or if you want to prove for the week one, looking for the podcast, or looking for part two for the one, whatever the podcast broadcast, or whatever drop down your podcast for, or if you're coaching for a while to learn more, or goaching dot com, or if you're looking for the podcast or week, go blog.