Why is Viking Fiberglass Pools so desperate to discredit Marcus Sheridan's Swimming Pool Ebook?

By Marcus Sheridan, www.PoolSchool.us

I'm a teacher. It's what I do. It's what I love. This is why after being in the swimming pool industry for eight years, and upon personally assisting about 400 families with the purchase of an inground swimming pool, I wrote a book about the process of purchasing an inground swimming pool. Frankly put, I saw a need for such a book and I knew that it would sell well and allow my desire to help others be satiated through my knowledge and experiences.

The eBook, "How to Buy a Pool the Right Way, From the Right Company, at the Right Price", has managed to create quite a commotion throughout the fiberglass pool industry. This commotion mainly stems from the 'Manufacturers' chapter of the eBook. In this chapter, I briefly describe what I like and don't like regarding each fiberglass pool manufacturer and give a 'grade' to each based on what I have seen, heard, and learned regarding their products.

As co-owner of River Pools and Spas in Virginia/Md, I've had the opportunity to install 6 different fiberglass pools from various companies: Composite Pools, Viking Pools (Composite is a part of Viking and we've installed over 350 of these pools), Trilogy Pools, San Juan Pools, Leisure Pools, and Blue Hawaiian Pools. Beyond these six manufacturers, I've had the opportunity to service and study most other brands in the industry. With so much interaction with the various brands, and with no previous written opinions of said brands, it only made sense for me to discuss these companies and their products when I wrote the eBook.

What's interesting is that Ashley Gill (one of the owners of Leisure Fiberglass Pools), told me once he had reviewed my book to prepare myself for what was about to come. I asked him what his concern was and he said, "Marc, you've done something here that no one in the world has done up to this point. You've spoken your honest, professional opinion about these manufacturers, some of which are very big companies, and so you better just watch your back."

Well Mr. Gill, you were right-on with your prognostication. He was especially spot-on with respect to the actions of Todd Stahl of Viking Pools, who has done his best since the eBook came out to discredit my thoughts on his product and try to make me appear ignorant and dishonest. On his website (www.vikingpools.net), he does a 'book review' of my eBook and also post a 'letter' from his attorney to me. So apparently, Mr. Stahl is awfully worried that someone within the industry actually expressed an opinion regarding his product. In fact, my exact words in the eBook are:

"Viking (West Virginia, Florida, Texas, California) Pro: Along with San Juan, Viking is the most established name in the fiberglass pool industry today. Viking has many models to choose from and some very nice designs (the Caribbean and Cancun are very popular and look great if you want a very curvy pool). Viking does offer a variety of colored surfaces. They also recently came out with a new website design, which was EXTREMELY well done. As you can probably already see, I like it when pool companies give you, the consumer, lots of information. And Viking's website certainly does this. (It also talks a lot about this book, which is pretty hilarious.)

Con: I haven't been impressed with Viking's focus on quality and innovation over the past few years. This is due, in my opinion, to their focus on expansion versus innovation, basically the opposite approach of San Juan, Blue Hawaiian, and just about everyone else. Although Viking's colored finishes (aka crystite colors) have a great look and luster, if there is ever a repair needed it is very hard to make the patch match well. In fact, their repairs are normally a disaster. I have talked to quite a few people since I wrote this eBook that have related stories to me regarding all the problems they've had with Viking repairs. The color problem isn't Viking's only issue though. In 2007, my company had to send back to the factory a handful of 'new' pools because of spider cracking in the gel-coat after shipping. Simply put, with so much attention to growth and expansion the product has now suffered to the point that my company left them and I flat-out don't recommend their product. What's even funnier is their owner now has some weird vendetta out against me because I speak honestly about the pros and cons of his pools. As I mentioned, he talks about me on the cover page of his website. He has also told me he was going to sue me because I talk about his product in a negative light. The truth is that I would be happy to change my stance/rating on Viking if they would change their colored finishes. But instead of admitting his own product deficiencies, their owner Todd Stahl has instead tried to make me out as a 'bad guy'. Oh well. Such is life I guess.

Overall Rating: C-"

So there you have it. That's what I say about Viking. And when I say I'd be happy to change their rating, I'm not kidding. It's not my goal to smear Viking Fiberglass Pools. My only goal upon writing the eBook was to give my honest OPINIONS, which is what I have done. In fact, I state multiple times throughout the eBook that everything written is MY opinion. Considering my company has installed more Viking/CPC pools than about 99% of the pool companies in the world, I would think I've earned the right to have an opinion. At one time, especially before Viking went through its 'expansion' stage (that I won't delve into here), they made a very solid pool. Although their color finish still had its issues, the pool's structure was at least very good. But then came 2007 and early 2008, which were disasters for our company with Viking. They had gone through many changes and as I stated in the eBook, their pools kept showing up to us in very poor condition. And when a pool comes in poor condition and has spider cracks, this is obviously a very bad thing. We at River Pools kept telling Viking they needed to make a change, but the product just continued to have issues. And if repairs on their pools were needed, they almost always looked awful. These issues put my business partners and me in a major dilemma. Should we drop such an established company that we've built our River Pools brand around, or should be choose a company with less of a name but with a structure and color finish that was superior to all other manufacturers? Our conscious pushed us towards the latter, and so we embraced Leisure Pools as our main line. We also decided to offer Blue Hawaiian. So we stopped selling Viking's pools in early 2008 and about 2 months after not having placed any more orders, we received a letter from Viking Pools telling us that because we were no longer promoting their product, we could no longer sell their pools. Obviously, this made no difference to us. In fact, it was pretty laughable at the time considering a company that normally ordered about 7 pools from them a month had gone 2 months without placing a single order. So now, as Viking likes to talk about how they 'dropped' our company, I can only shake my head.

Todd Stahl likes to promote that many other companies are against me as well regarding my statements in the eBook. Well the fact is the only other company that got upset with me was Water World Pools of New Jersey. I would delve into the experiences I've had with Water World here, but it's of no importance really, especially considering they are a factory direct company with their own way of doing things. But since the release of "How to Buy a Pool the Right Way", I have personally talked to the following: Kirk Sullivan (owner)of San Juan Pools, Michelle Forchetti (sales rep) of Trilogy Pools, Curt Prystupa (owner)of Sun Pools, Ashley Gill of Leisure Pools and also received letters from Blue Hawaiian Pools as well as Alaglass Pools. What's really interesting is that I spoke positively and negatively of each one of these companies in the eBook. And instead of them complaining, crying foul, and having attorneys send me letters; they instead addressed my points with class and dignity. Kirk Sullivan went so far as to invite me to his plant to show me his manufacturing methods and Curt Prystupa of Sun went to great lengths to explain to me his pool manufacturing materials and methodology. With each of these conversations, I have adjusted my comments in the eBook so as to maintain accuracy with its statements. And do you know the only company that has yet to personally contact me? Yep, Viking Pools. Todd Stahl could have easily said, "Marc, you are wrong because these are the changes we've made to our pools." Or "Marc, let me show you how we've improved our colored finishes." But has there been any of this? No, No, and No.

It's pretty sad when a 31 year old guy who likes to help people and has over 500 positive references of pools his company has installed get smeared because of honest opinions. The fact is, Todd Stahl has a choice to make regarding his products. He can return to being one of the best in the fiberglass swimming pool industry or he can continue to write silly book reviews and compare authors to "A 6 year old girl" (again, see his book review).

As for me, I'll just keep helping people. Just look at some of the testimonials at www.PoolSchool.us, which, along with www.riverpoolsandspas.com is arguably the most informative fiberglass pool education site on the World Wide Web. After two years of selling this book online, I have yet to receive even ONE negative comment or complaint. I've met and helped many wonderful people with my willingness to answer ALL the emails I've ever gotten. So I'll just keep doing my thing and let Todd Stahl of Viking Pools do his and I guess we'll see who truly helps more people in the long run.

Sincerely,

Marcus Sheridan

riverpoolsmarc@gmail.com