How to Identify Unprofitable Pool Customers

Some pool accounts don’t just take time, they take your peace. If you’ve ever pulled up to a stop and felt your stomach drop, there’s usually a reason: the customer is difficult, the pool is a nightmare to access, or the property is a leaf factory that turns every visit into a cleanup marathon. We break down the most common “bad fit” pool service accounts and how to spot them before they wreck your schedule, your margins, and your mood.

We start with customer red flags: the overly picky client who questions everything, the chronically frugal owner who refuses necessary pool equipment upgrades, and the person who never responds when you need approvals or payment. These patterns don’t just create annoyance, they create unpaid admin time, delayed repairs, and repeated callbacks that make your whole pool route less profitable.

Then we get into pool-specific dealbreakers. Think complicated pool builds with multiple pumps, water features, and confusing valve systems, plus designs that limit access with rocks or awkward layouts. We also talk about why large pools can be fine until a windstorm, equipment failure, or algae bloom hits, and why heavy leaf debris pools can fool you during bidding season thanks to seasonal tree behavior like eucalyptus shedding and oak pollen.

You’ll also get practical strategies for pool service pricing and route management: when to bid high, how to raise your monthly service rate when the workload changes, and a simple script for letting a customer go gracefully. We wrap with the “one for one rule” for upgrading your pool route without losing income. If you’re building a tighter, faster, more profitable pool service business, hit play, then subscribe, share the episode with a pool pro friend, and leave a review with the worst pool account you’ve ever had.

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Transcript

Difficult Customers To Avoid

Problem Pools With Bad Design

Why Large Pools Become Nightmares

Leaf Debris Pools And Smart Bidding

Raise Rates Or Let Pools Go

The One For One Rule

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Hi and welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. In this episode, it may be obvious what I'm talking about here, but I think it's always good to hear it and maybe reevaluate your pool route. If you have any of these pools on your route, you may consider dropping them, switching them off your route. And I'm gonna talk about pools that you want to avoid on your pool route. 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. The first one maybe is not as obvious as you think, and this is a pool that has a difficult customer. Now, everyone has to deal with tough customers, and if you've ever been in line at Walmart returning something, invariably you'll have someone in front of you that's really angry trying to return something, yelling, screaming, going a little ballistic. And hopefully it's not you, that person, that's doing that. But basically, you are going to deal with all kinds of people out there, and it's your choice, really, if you want to spend time dealing with someone difficult. I feel like life's too short. There's so many nice customers out there and nice people to do business with that I wouldn't waste time with a difficult person. Now, this can fit into many categories, and I'll go over some of the ones that are kind of that kind of bug me. The first one is the one that's overly picky, and this is someone that's always questioning everything you're doing. They may even have they may even message you saying that there's still debris in their pool after you were there, or the pool doesn't look quite right, that you they look at it, it looks kind of cloudy. All these kind of things add up to a very difficult time, and this is the kind of person that you eventually want to get off your route. And I'll go over uh some easy strategies later to remove people from your route. The other one would be the person that's really a doesn't want to spend money on anything. I don't know exactly what you want to call this person, you know, someone who is kind of frugal, and they don't upgrade their equipment, they don't do anything to improve their pool. Every time you send them a bill with something that's not in a monthly service, they question it. Again, these are the people that kind of bug me, and everyone has a different tolerance. So you may tolerate this person more than I would, but anyone that overscrutinizes the bill, won't do anything, or is always looking for a bargain, and is reluctant to spend any money at all on their pool, is someone that I avoid because you're gonna have a lot of problems upgrading equipment, charging for parts. Everything you're gonna do is gonna be met by this wall of not wanting to spend money. There's a funny parable of a miser that was saving all his gold. He would he lived in a ramshackled house, he would, you know, not eat very well, not dress very well, so he would bury his gold in his backyard and just kind of you know live like a miser, even though he had all this gold. And one day his gold got stolen and he just went crazy crying and bellying about how all this money's gone. And his neighbor said, Well, it doesn't really matter if someone stole it or not, you weren't using it anyway, so you're no no worse off. And that's basically how I kind of look at these customers that won't buy a new pump or won't buy a new filter, and usually these are customers that have a really large bank account or salary, and you know they have plenty of resources, but they just won't part with their money. And it's one of those things where I just avoid these kind of customers entirely. I had this customer one time when I was doing their pool, and they were just new in the country, and they asked me, you know, where do people usually keep all their money? Do they keep it in their in their house? This is literally what they said, do they keep it in their bedroom, in their mattress, or you know, because I don't really trust the bank, what do you suggest I do with all the money I have in my house? It was kind of one of those things where it's like, why are you asking me? You know, why are you giving me this information because this is not something you want to be sharing out there? But I did tell them that it would be much safer if they had a safe put in, you know, and they can also hide the safe and disguise it. It's one of those things where people some people do have a lot of money. And by the way, these customers were not cheap in any way, they were really really good with their money. But I thought it was kind of funny that they came out and were asking me, like, you know, because they don't trust the banks in their country, and a lot of countries don't have the same banking system where it's protected, they the government come in and take their money out of their account, and there's no recourse, there's no FDIC insurance in a lot of these foreign countries. So we're kind of spoiled here that if something happens to your bank, you have your money in there, you're insured up to 250,000, I believe is what they raised it to. So it's really nice to be in America. I just went on a little tangent there. I'll get back to problem customers. Another one is the customer that just is not responsive. This bothers me just as much as the customer that's overly picky. This is the one that you message, you text, you call, you want to get approval for something, you want to get your your monthly service rate paid. You just want to get a hold of them, and they just never return your messages. They kind of ghost you. And once in a while they'll send you a message randomly out of the blue, and you know that they exist, they're still alive, I guess, at that point. But those are the ones that really bug me. There's a whole bunch more I can add to this list. All to say that you want to avoid certain customer personality types because you can avoid them eventually once you start building your route. Now, of course, when you're starting out, you're taking every customer, every pool you can get until you get established, and you're gonna learn a lot about customer relations dealing with people as you start out, and you're gonna learn about a lot about the pools you want to avoid on your pool route in the future. Let me talk a little bit about those pools you want to avoid. The one I'll start with is not one that you may think of as a problem pool, but there are pools out there where the builder kind of goes crazy. They they kind of do whatever the customer wants, and you're left dealing with the consequence of this. Now, this could be anything from them putting in like five water features with four pumps, or putting in a really complicated valve system where you know two pumps control six different returns, and you have Sean de Sears, you have you know side jets, and they're all controlled by these valves. It could be a real headache figuring out where to put everything or what position to put them. Could be an infinity edge pool with two systems or with the equipment really far from the pool. Any of these can be a little bit of a headache. The other problem you were going to run into with these crazy builds is someone who builds a pool where you can't access part of the pool. Maybe there's rock formations on one side and there's no way to brush or clean one side of the pool, or there's other weird things about the pool where you're kind of limited to one side of the pool or two sides of the pool, and you can't really clean the pool effectively. You'll get some of these, especially in Southern California, where the pools are just kind of wild and the builder doesn't care because he built it, he's gone, and now you have to deal with all the extra valves and extra pumps and all the rock features and kind of jumping and dodging stuff at the pool. I've actually fallen off a rock formation section of a pool into the pool. It was kind of embarrassing, but I you know it's one of those pools where one side where these rock formations I had to get over to the brush to pool. Never liked doing that, and I did slip and fall into the pool. So those can be not only hazardous, but they can be annoying when someone builds a pool where access is a problem, partially on one side of the pool, or you know, things like that really kind of bug me. And those pools you probably don't want to keep around if you really have to, you know, put on extension poles and kind of brush one side of the pool or kind of do gymnastics gymnastics, I can say that word, to get to the other side of the pool. Another type of pool that you may want to avoid, and it may not be avoidable in your service area, but fortunately in my area of Southern California, there aren't too many large pools. I consider anything over 30,000 gallons a large pool. Well, 25,000 gallons I would say would constitute a pretty large pool. Now, the weekly maintenance is not a problem on a large pool, technically. If the equipment is the right size and everything is fine, you're really not going to have any problem with these large pools. But if you're forward thinking like I am, or I learned to be by taking on these pools without thinking too much about them, the problem arises when there's a problem with a large pool. Now, here in my area we have what's called the Santa Ana winds. It's a really bad problem to have because these winds come from anytime from October through March, and it could be anywhere with gusts of 60 miles an hour. We've had we had winds last year with 80 mile hour gusts. So it's gonna be something to consider with a large pool because the large pool is gonna fill up with a ton of debris from a windstorm versus a 10,000 gallon pool versus a 35,000 gallon pool. So that's the problem that's inherent in a large pool is that when there is a problem, if the pump were to die and then the pool were to get algae in it, brushing a large 35,000 gallon pool with a six-inch algae brush to kind of get that stubborn algae off is backbreaking, time consuming, and really annoying. And you're gonna question, you know, why in the world am I doing this gigantic pool? I'm just gonna get rid of it and get three 10,000 gallon pools to take its place. Because when there is a problem, algae or windstorm or heavy use, then you're gonna really have to suffer and deal with this. And it's really much harder and it takes a lot longer to turn a large pool around than a small pool. And a large pool can get away from you very quickly. You can get an algae bloom that's like no tomorrow, and it's really hard to control, or you're gonna be cleaning the debris out of the pool for like four weeks, you know, trying to get this pool cleaned up. So large pools are something that I avoid here in my area. 15,000 gallons or less, you know, 20,000 is the biggest pool I would take in my area. Of course, you may be limited if you're in like Hawaii or Texas, large pools are kind of the norm. But here, if you can't avoid it, I like the small pools that you can kind of jump across. Here's another one that I definitely pass on when I can, and this is pools with a lot of leaf debris. Now, sometimes you're gonna be tricked or fooled with these pools. You may look up and see very little trees, or the trees don't look that bad, but then there are certain points of the season. For example, let's say that just a little bit from the tr pool are eucalyptus trees, maybe they're even on a neighbor's property, and you're you're at the pool, you know, in December or January, and it looks great. You know, it looks really clean, there's no debris in there. But you have to kind of be an expert on trees, and you're gonna develop this skill as well. I have a book that I got that I carry with me on different species of trees, and it talks about when they pollinate, when they drop. And so if you don't know anything about eucalyptus trees, they're actually pretty good in the wintertime, but in the summertime is when they start shedding their bark and their leaves, and it just gets really messy. Plus, the leaves of eucalyptus trees for some reason seem to have a lot of organic staining in pools, and you'll get all the leaves off, and there'll be brown stains all over the bottom of the pool, which can be lifted over time by superchlorinating. But if you get this pool in December, you're not gonna know how bad it's gonna be in the summer with all the leaves dropping in it because it's kind of opposite of most trees. Most trees are you know in the fall or the spring, and eucalyptus trees are actually in the summertime when everything starts falling off of them. So you can't be easily tricked or fooled just by going to the pool and nothing looks amiss with it. But during certain parts of the season, like oak trees, you know, in April, they're gonna all the little pollen stuff comes off of it into the pool. It becomes really a nightmare, and you have to kind of just gauge the pool based on what you see around the pool. The wind blows and you have a lot of trees around it. Definitely you're gonna have a heavy debris pool. It may just be a heavy debris pool because there's tons of trees around it already. You get to to do the bidding of this pool, the skimmer basket's already full of leaves, the whole surface is covered, the bottom is covered. You know that this pool is a heavy debris pool. Now, how do you get out of looking bad when you get to the pool and bidding? Well, you just give them a really high bid. And if they say yes, you can take the pool on if you so choose. But if let's say you get to a pool, normally you would charge 180, and this pool is like really heavy debris, just quote them 280, and usually they'll just balk on it and just let you walk and get out of there with no problem, and you won't have to worry about them. But if they do accept 280, you know, the extra$100 maybe worth your time spending there to clean the pool, may not be worth it. I had a a member of my group that what he would do when he got in a situation where he got a pool that was heavy debris, didn't realize it till later, he would tell the customer that when I bid the pool, I didn't realize that during these three months it would look like this, you know. So unfortunately, the rate I quoted you was for a different look of the pool. And if you're willing to pay an extra$80 a month, I'll continue to service the pool because I'm spending extra time here. If not, I totally understand it's my fault for taking on the pool and bidding that amount. And I didn't know that it was gonna be this kind of heavy debris. So I understand if you don't want to continue service at that point, and usually nine times out of ten, the customer will be real understanding. And since he's been doing the pool for four or five months, they'll go ahead and increase the rate. So that's the strategy. You just don't want to grin and bear it. If you can't get that pool off your route, you may just want to raise the service rate and explain to the customer that it's taking a lot more time at that pool during those seasons and is something that's really that you didn't anticipate that. So you can change your rates. Don't feel like if you get a large pool and you bid it and you realize that you underbid the pool because it's larger than you thought, just let the customer know that it's taking you a lot longer to clean the pool and you're gonna have to raise the rate. It's not pleasant, it's not a pleasant conversation, but it's one that you're gonna need to make to stay in business. Now, last, I'm gonna let you in on how to kind of let the customer go graciously. And you don't want to say that you're consolidating your pool route and you're you have too many pools in outlying areas, or you're moving your your route location because you may eventually get a pool like right across the street, and that would be kind of awkward that you're doing the neighbor's pool, but you're not doing their pool. Is there like a line right down the middle of the street and you know on this side like school districts and this side you go to another another school? So you don't want to do that, but I would tell the customer that you're overbooked. Unfortunately, I'm overbooked on service accounts and I have just too many accounts of service, I don't have the proper help. And unfortunately, I'm gonna have to let some pools go. And your pool is one of those pools. And if you need a referral, now if the pool is referable, definitely refer to a friend. If it's not referrable, let them know that you don't really know anyone in the area that can call, you know, go to Google and see if they can find another service provider. But let them down by saying that you have everyone understands when you're too busy because sometimes they're too busy themselves, and use that as your excuse that you are overbooked, too many accounts, you have to downsize, and you're gonna have to let some pools go. And unfortunately, theirs is one of them. So at the end of the month, you're gonna have to. I'm gonna have to stop servicing your pool. Now, you don't want to do that until you get a nice pool to replace the income. This is called the one for one rule. I don't know if that's what it's actually called, that's what I call it. I I can probably patent that or not patent it, copyright that term, but the one for one rule says you get a really nice pool. Let's say it's all cement, there's no trees around it, the the customer's gone six months out of the year. Perfect pool. You get that pool, then you have that pool that's heavy debris that you've been wanting to drop. Now you can easily drop that heavy debris pool or large pool, and you have a pool to replace it right there. You're not losing any income, and you save a lot of time, and your day is a lot better. And this is the rule that a lot of people implement as they grow. Again, when you're starting out, you can't do this right away. You just want as many accounts as you can get. You deal with it, you suffer through it, you learn you know what not you don't like. Let's say you don't like a pool that has really old equipment. Well, in the future, you're not gonna take a pool on that has really old equipment because you hate struggling with it. But for now, you have to take that pool on, and then you're gonna weed down your route by doing this one-for-one kind of thing. Until you get you have a pool route where you have all the pools you like and none of the pools you don't like. And there's no need to keep a pool if you don't like the pool. You may love the customer, you may it might fit right into your pool route, but trust me, don't keep a pool that you don't like because it's gonna be one of those things where you're gonna dread going there, it's gonna be a drag on your day, and it's much better if you just get rid of that pool when you can and not worry about you know the customer's super nice. That's understandable, but the pool takes you an extra 20 minutes to clean, their niceness is not gonna compensate for that. And it's one of those things where as you get bigger, you're gonna get better as well. The pools are gonna get better, your route's gonna be tighter and faster, and all these other pools are gonna have to go to someone who's just starting out in the business, unfortunately. And there's plenty of people that will take these pools on. It just won't be you. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those by going to my website, swingingpro learning.com. On the banner, click on the podcast icon. There'll be over 1900 podcasts there for you to listen to at your leisure. If you're interested in the coaching program, you can learn more at poolguidecoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a rest of your week. God bless.