Caribbean Pools & Spas of Central Florida Inc

Who they are

Caribbean Pools & Spas of Central Florida is registered at Murphy Street in Oviedo, Seminole County. Their phone number is a Jacksonville one, and the only town pages they have actually written are for Jacksonville, Fleming Island and St. Johns. This is a northeast Florida builder, not a central Florida one. If you are in the Orlando area and found them by the name, they are probably not local to you; if you are in Duval or Clay County, they are. Their Florida contractor license, CPC1457992, was issued in March 2010 and is current — sixteen years — and their domain dates from 2006. They describe themselves as a premier or number one builder, which is not a position anyone holds on the record.

What they build

New pool construction, renovation, spas and hot tubs, water features and outdoor living work. Five lines. They publish a full set of twenty-four project photographs, which is the most useful part of the site for judging finished work, and they publish no opening hours. Their reviews describe dealing with the owner directly from the first visit onward, which for a firm this size is how it works — there is no account manager between you and the person whose license it is.

Where they work

Jacksonville and the northeast, despite the company name. They publish their own written pages — written for each place rather than one template with the name swapped — for Jacksonville, Fleming Island and St. Johns. Three places, all in Duval and Clay counties, and a short honest list written properly is worth more than a long templated one. Read it as greater Jacksonville and the St. Johns corridor. Anything in central Florida is worth confirming carefully, because nothing on their site is written for it.

What the record shows

Google has them at 3.7 from seven reviews, which is eight tenths below the 4.52 Florida average. Seven reviews is a very small sample, too small for any theme to reach our reporting floor in either direction, so what follows is individual accounts rather than patterns — but on a record this short the individual accounts are all there is, and they are sharply divided. Two customers are emphatic in their favour, and specifically about the thing this trade most often fails at: one describes the dig date starting on time and the pool finishing on time, and the whole experience as good from the owner's first visit to the final handover. That is a real endorsement and it deserves stating first. Against it, two accounts are among the most serious on this entire list. One describes an owner who is essentially unreachable — unresponsive during the build and worse afterwards. The other describes a pool that developed three structural cracks and leaked through the shell, along with cracked coping and other defects, and says the company refused to accept responsibility and that the matter went to litigation. We cannot tell you how that dispute was resolved; a review is one side of it. If you are considering them, that is the conversation to have first: ask what the structural warranty says in writing, ask what happens if the shell cracks, ask for the addresses of three pools built in the last two years, and go and look at them.