Two families said they paid a Jacksonville contractor a combined $60,000 for pools for their backyards but they never got them.
News4JAX tried to contact the contractor and the company he gets pools from. That company has recommended him to customers for work. But the company said it’s not responsible for the contractor’s performance, acts or errors.
It’s all on paper: the checks, the contracts.
But Jerry Witt and Jessica Vaughn don’t have the pools they said they paid for over a year ago.
“We were infuriated,” Vaughn said. “If there’s two of us, there’s more of us.”
Vaughn said she hired C&C Above Ground Pools, the same company working on their neighbor’s pool.
The contractor is Joel Compton. In March of last year, Vaughn said her family put $42,000 down to get started.
“It took him a lot longer than expected to work on our neighbor’s pool. Took like seven months. But all the time he was still coming by. He had us file permits with the county, he had to sign the affidavit and go get it notarized,” Vaughn said.
Then, Vaughn said, Compton went silent.
Vaughn talked to him in April of this year and he said he’d been in the hospital and would come by in May but never showed. Now, 30 days after sending a demand letter, she’s getting the police involved.
So is Jerry Witt. His backyard has become an eyesore.
“We’re embarrassed when we have company over,” Witt said. “The erosion from underneath the concrete. And that’s why I have the sandbags here to help try to control it. I have a pump over there. And I have to pump it out every time it rains.”
He said he paid $22,000 to have his old pool replaced but it was left in ruins.
Witt has now filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office.
“I said ‘So, Joel, are you saying you’re gonna get this done? You’re gonna get the pool purchased and install it?’ He hesitated. He said ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘OK, then I’m demanding an end date, a finalized date that this is going to be completed’. And he goes, ‘You want an end date? I’ll give you an end date.’ And hangs up. And I haven’t heard from him since,” Witt said.
No one answered when News4JAX went to the address for C&C above-ground pools. A neighbor said Compton went to Pennsylvania about two weeks ago to possibly get a job and had plans to move there.
News4JAX also tried calling and left a message.
Now these families are stuck.
Vaughn said she doesn’t think she will get the money back but she is hopeful.
“We’re upset about it but we got to continue on and come up with another solution,” Witt said.
They only hope getting the police involved will make some kind of an impact.
Witt said he was forced to come out of retirement to try and make the money he lost back and is spending lots of money trying to keep up with what’s in his backyard.
Vaughn said she had to tear down her daughter’s treehouse in the backyard just for no work to be done.
They said people should check the contract for finalized dates for when the project should be completed and do as much research on contractors as they can.