Why Getting Paid Is Half the Job in Pool Service

Cash flow shouldn’t depend on crossed fingers and polite reminders. We break down a practical system any pool service pro can use to get paid on time, reduce risk on green‑to‑clean jobs and equipment installs, and avoid the legal and reputation traps that sink small businesses. From the exact language to put in a one‑page service agreement to the moment you pause service on a delinquent account, you’ll hear a straightforward playbook you can apply today.

We dig into the limits of liens, why small claims can still leave you empty‑handed, and how aggressive collections can backfire with damaging reviews. Instead, we focus on prevention: deposits of 30–50% for installs and cleanups, card on file with clear authorization, and fast invoicing that closes the loop while goodwill is highest. You’ll learn why removing unpaid equipment can be illegal, how to negotiate partial payments without losing leverage, and where payment platforms differ on chargeback protection. Real‑world stories highlight the risks—stalled payments, reversed charges, and vanished pumps—and the simple policies that stop them.

Most importantly, we show how to read red flags before you start: properties in distress, unclear payers, landlords who won’t meet, and clients who can’t fund a deposit. With firm boundaries and consistent follow‑through, you protect your calendar, your margins, and your brand. If you’re ready to turn “I’ll pay soon” into predictable revenue, hit play, steal the templates, and get your time back. Subscribe, share with a fellow pro who needs stronger policies, and leave a review to tell us the payment rule you swear by.

• setting clear payment terms and a hard pause date
• why liens and small claims rarely return cash
• protecting online reputation while collecting
• using deposits of 30–50% to cover costs
• avoiding illegal removal of installed equipment
• choosing secure payment tools and fast invoicing
• reading red flags and trusting gut checks
• negotiating partial payments without losing leverage

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Chapters

• 1:53 Setting The Stakes: Getting Paid
• 2:29 Limits Of Liens And Legal Options
• 5:46 Reputation Risks Of Aggressive Collection
• 6:06 Written Agreements And Payment Policies
• 7:32 The One‑Month Boundary And Pausing Service
• 9:37 Partial Payments And Install Pitfalls
• 11:08 Why You Must Never Remove Installed Gear
• 13:21 The Real Value And Limits Of Liens
• 14:21 Deposits, Card On File, And Vendor Parallels
• 16:29 Red Flags And Reading The Customer
• 18:50 Avoid Weak Payment Channels And Use Square

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:02

Hey, welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to talk to you about collecting late payments, what you can do to recover money owed to you by clients, and ways to avoid kind of being stiffed out there and not getting paid for services or goods that you provided to a customer. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the Pool Guy Coaching Program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support. From me, I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com. First, I think you should know that as a pool service company, your recourse for getting money owed to you is very limited. What I mean by this is that if the customer decides to stop paying the monthly service after one month, collecting the money owed you is very difficult if you do a green pool cleanup and you don't have any money in advance. And I'll touch on some ways to protect yourself with that as well, and you go to collect the money and they don't want to pay you for the green pool cleanup. Let's say they owe you$800, collecting that money becomes very difficult as well. In the state of California, the only person that could put a lien on a house for money owed for any kind of service or construction is a licensed contractor by the state of California. So yes, you can go file a lien against the customer, but you can't record that lien. So what that means is that anyone can file a lien, but the only people that can record the lien in the court to make it legal and binding is a contractor. Now I had some work done a few years ago. I had some cement delivered. It was a you know the big cement trucks, so they pumped some cement out, and I think it was like a week later I got a letter from the company. I think it was I can't remember the name of the ready mixed company, and it said that they put a lien on my property. So I was a little bit concerned and upset, so I called them and I said, Hey, you know, why did you put a lien on my property? And they said, We do this automatically to every single customer we deliver to. We'll put a lien on the property the week after we deliver the cement because we want to make sure that we get paid and we have to file this so that we, you know, it was really something that I didn't agree with them doing, by the way, and I don't think it's good business practice, but they've probably not been paid before, so I understand that aspect of it. So they said they didn't record it, they just sent me a letter saying there's a lien, and if I don't pay them by the end of the month, they're gonna record it with the court. So they were licensed contractors, they had the ability to do that and to send a notice out. You as a pool service professional, unless you are a general contractor, have a license with the state, whatever state you're in, you cannot put a lien on that property and enforce it. So without the ability to record a lien for money owed you, like the Green Pool cleanup and things like that, you can't really do much except maybe go to small claims court, which is a big hassle, and even if you do get a judgment against the customer, collecting that judgment becomes problematic. Now, you can of course contact collecting agency companies and have them call the customer that costs money as well. How effective will that be? It may be counterproductive because the customer may just go on Google and leave you a really bad review. And so, this is the danger in the digital age with trying to collect money through small claims court or through a collecting agency, is that the customer's recourse would be to just slander and destroy your business online. You gotta be really careful with your online reputation, and that's why when money is owed, approaching it in a way that is very diplomatic is the best thing you can do to protect your brand and reputation. The first thing is you should have something in writing, and I have a one-page service agreement. I can email that to you as well if you email me at David at Slemefullearning.com. And in my agreement, I have here under owner's responsibility, line number four says submit payment by the 10th of the month to avoid a late fee of ten dollars. I probably should adjust that up a little higher. I haven't I haven't really worked on that. I really don't give customers late fees either. I should start enforcing that as well. It says if the payment for the number line number five is the important line, says if the payment for the previous month is not received by the 15th of the month, service will be paused. So here is where I think a lot of pool pros make the mistake, they let the customer go too long before stopping service. And sometimes you can give customers too much grace, and if you're two or three months, if they're two or three months behind, and I've said this many times, if someone owes you three months of pool service, and let's just say you charge 190 a month times three, that means they owe you$570 at that point. If they can't pay you for the previous months to begin with, they probably can't come up with$570 to clear the balance and continue service. So if you went that far and you're still doing the pool after two months have passed by and you build them for the third month, you're really at fault at that point for not pulling the plug a lot earlier. So one month is as far as I'll go. And if I don't get the money by the 15th of the month that that for the previous month, I stop servicing the pool because psychologically I know that the customer doesn't either a care to pay or b can't pay and catch up. And if I continue to do the pool for another month, then they're two months behind and they're three months behind, and then it becomes something that's unattainable as far as getting your money at that point. Now, you can negotiate with the clients, and I've done this before too, to get some kind of partial payment out of them. And then once you get that partial payment, you can make the decision if that's enough for you and maybe just stop service at that point, or if that's enough for you to continue and wait for the rest of the money to come in, depending on how much they actually give you for that partial payment. The same thing if you do an install of equipment or do some kind of repair there and they don't pay you for it. Sometimes you can negotiate a partial payment to at least cover the cost of your whatever you put in. I would say I would warn anyone that thinks that if they install a pump or motor or filter and they don't receive payment, if they go back in there and cut it out and take it back to their shop, that's actually illegal, at least in California, probably most states. Once you install the equipment, it becomes on it becomes part of the customer's property, and that is grand theft at that point, if it's over a thousand dollars, and you could be in a lot of legal trouble. So you don't want to go back in and cut out the equipment. That's something that is definitely not something that you should do. I had one pool pro that I know here, it's the strangest thing, but he put in a pump and motor at a customer's house, and they called him and said, Hey, you know it's missing. It's like, what do you mean it's missing? Like a week later, they called and said it's missing. And he went over to the pool, and sure enough, the pump and motor were gone, like they were cut out. And of course, he suspects that they took it for whatever reason because they couldn't pay him, and they made it look like someone stole it, which could be the case. It sounds more logical that that's what actually happened to it. I mean, it's possible someone broke in there and stole it, but his thought was that they weren't gonna pay him for it, so they took it out, and they would have just someone else reinstall it later, and they have this nice new pump and motor that he didn't get paid for. That could happen, but it's far-fetched that that would happen every day. Usually what happens, I just thought about that when I was talking about you going in or cutting out the equipment, and I think what more than likely happens is that you put the equipment in, they refuse to pay, they know you can't come in and get it, so they just leave it back there, and you really have no recourse except smallest claims court. If you're a licensed contractor, you can file a lien, but then filing a lien doesn't really do a lot for you because you know basically they can't refinance their house or change title or sell their house without paying you that money, so it's just sitting there floating maybe for 10 or 15 years, and you may never see that money because they may never sell or refinance their house. So that's a problem as well. That the lien does have limitations. So the best thing you can do to avoid the other end of it, trying to collect the money, fighting the customer for it, trying to kind of be diplomatic so you don't get a bad review is to make sure you have some parameters up front. I mentioned the service agreement where you stop service on the 15th of the month if you haven't got the previous month's payment, and you can pause service without losing too much money at that point. But as far as installing, you would want to get if it's someone you don't know, or if it's a customer that is shaky to begin with, you would want to get some money up front, you know, half of it at least in some cases, or at least 30% of it. You got to think of some amount of money to collect from the customer. I mentioned this story before. I have a contractor that I was using for many years, doing a lot of projects for me. We went to the same church group. We were friends for a very long time. I've probably known him for 20 years, but every single project he did for me, whether it's painting something or repairing a fence, he would ask me for a 30% deposit. And it's nothing personal, you just flat out every single person, no matter who it is, he has the same policy. You pay him 30%, then he starts the work. You don't pay him 30%, the work never gets started. And the same thing with your business, it should just be cut and dry. You know, if you deal with any kind of plumbers or HVAC people, in most cases, if they're new to you, they're gonna have your credit card on file and they're gonna let you know with a disclosure that they're gonna charge you if you fail to pay the bill. And this is just to protect the companies. People will stiff you if you don't have this kind of protection. And so other vendors do this as well. So you should implement the same thing to where if they want a pump and motor installed, if they don't pay you the 40% down payment first, then you don't step onto their property. Now it kind of is a little um give and take here as far as you know, can they trust you to actually provide the installation of the product that they requested? And more than likely, if you are a reputable pool company, they're gonna go online and check your reviews and they're gonna see that you're not going to not do what they you say you're gonna do. So they have more trust in you and faith in you usually than you can actually place in the customer because you don't know them, nor do you know their payment history. I always thought that it'd be really cool to have like markers out there so that we can let other people know that this customer is a problem, you know, like a little red sticker you can put on the equipment, or if they're kind of marginal, put a yellow sticker. If they're great customers, put a green sticker. But of course, how would how would you universally do that? That'd be nice to do, but but logistically, probably not possible. In any account, you should get a percentage of money up front from the customer, green pool cleanup, equipment install, so that you're guaranteed at least to cover your cost, and if they don't pay you the final amount, you haven't lost everything. I'd also suggest kind of using your sixth sense when you go out to these jobs when you're bidding them. A lot of times you can kind of sense the customer and you get a feeling for them just how their house looks. And if you get to their property and they have a car up front that's on cinder blocks, the front tires on cinder blocks, and the grass in the backyard is up to your knees, and you go back to the equipment, and it looks like they're just patching it, and there's duct tape, and it looks like it's a real mess, and then you give them a quote for a new pump and motor and filter install. And if you don't collect a deposit at that point, I would say that you probably are blind and you just aren't paying attention to the warning signs out there. There are some less subtle warning signs, of course, that you can really apply when you're out there. And if you don't take a deposit, that's a problem. I would also avoid taking a deposit with PayPal. PayPal is notorious for reversing charges for whoever uses that service. So just be careful. I've had a group member in Houston have the whole equipment pad, have the charges reversed, and ironically, it was a realtor that hired him to do this in a repo home. She paid him, you know, she paid him like$5,000 on PayPal for everything, and then she said it never provided services. So you never know who you can't trust and who you can trust this day and age. And I would definitely recommend getting some money up front and making sure that you you kind of know the person you're dealing with, either from a referral, if you're doing a lot of kind of cold calling repairs where you have a list on your website and people are calling you for services and work. It really is important to get that deposit, you know, at least 40%, sometimes 50% if you can. There's a certain level of percentage that kind of tips in the other direction where the customer doesn't trust you at that point. But really, you'd want to get some kind of deposit. I usually take the credit card with Square to make sure it goes in right away. That's the best way to do it to have a card swiper out there or have a square terminal. That way you get the money right away. And then as soon as you finish the job, you want to invoice them for the balance. And the square invoice is great too, because then he'll just finish off the transaction with their credit card, and then you're pretty much set and protected at that point. It's a pretty good service that offers you good protection from a customer claiming anything that is not true against you. And again, your sixth cents is really important. If you if it feels funny, you know, the customer's like, well, you know, I'm at my max on my credit card, so can I write you a check, or can I pay you with when you're finished with my other credit card, or I need to pay off my balance or transfer money to pay you? Those are all red flags. If they don't have the ready money available at that point when they hire you, chances are they're not going to have the money available when you finish. So all those are things to be aware of. I had one group member do a green to pool, green to clean, green to pool, green to clean out a pool where he was a landlord, he didn't meet the person, he knew nothing about them, went out there, spent a lot of time cleaning the pool up, and then the landlord said, Well, I went to the pool and it doesn't look that great. You know, I I feel like you didn't do the job right, so I'm not gonna pay you until you know I'm satisfied. Again, meet the person you're dealing with so you kind of have a sense if this person's gonna actually pay you. I really wouldn't do a big job like that, like a green pool cleanup that's gonna cost you hundreds of dollars without meeting the client, getting a feel for them, and getting a deposit from the client. And his excuse was, Well, I don't know you, I don't know your work, and I don't live there, it's a rental, and I can't be there to give you any kind of deposit. I don't want I don't feel comfortable giving you a credit card over the phone, so I'll have to pay you after you finish. So anyone that kind of leads you on like that, where they can't pay the deposit for whatever reason, I would really be worried about getting the money at the end of that job. And you have to really kind of understand human nature, and it's not like they're out not to pay you, it's just that they don't feel like they need to pay you right away or feel like it's important to pay you. It's weird, but a lot of people when you do weekly service or monthly pool service on their pool, they'll be behind in their payment. And once they pay you, they're like, Oh yeah, I I just got you know, I got busy and I wasn't paying attention, and I wasn't really looking at your emails, and here's the balance that I owed you. I'm sorry about that. Strange, but people will do that. You know, you'll be emailing them or texting them, and you get like zero response, and then maybe they'll pay you like a week later, and their excuse is they were just busy and they weren't paying attention to your messages. So people are different for sure, and you have to have strong boundaries as far as collecting money, when to draw the line, when to pull the plug and the service. And you know, if you don't have those strong boundaries, chances are you're not gonna get paid for something, or you're gonna continue service too long and be out of money, and the customer will never actually pay you for the work. So just be careful that I think it really starts at the beginning with strong boundaries with the customer, also understanding the client, you know, having your radar on for anything fishy or weird, and not making that mistake and falling into that trap. Looking for other podcasts, you can find those on my website, swimmingprolearning.com. Click on the podcast icon on the banner. There'll be over 1800 podcasts for you to listen to. And if you're interested in the coaching program that I offer, you can learn more at PoolGuyCoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have you guys week? God bless.