Family Leisure Kansas City — Local services in Olathe

Pool purchased in April, installed in early June. A little longer than the wait they told us, but not bad. I will echo other reviews in that the salesman told me I was on the install list the day I picked up the pool, but only to find out later that I wasn't on any list until I forwarded my permits to Walt. I only found this out once I called and asked why I hadn't heard from an installer a couple of weeks after the purchase. As far as the pool itself, I rate it a full 5 stars. We have been swimming at least once a day every day. Kids are sleeping great at night! This COVID summer has been quite nice having our own oasis in the backyard.

As far as dealing with Family Leisure I will say the sales staff is just that. Sales staff. Mark seems to be the most knowledgeable, if you have any real questions about the pools seek him out. But do your own research too. In reality they need to sell pools to make money so that's what they do. You get the pleasure of being the general contractor of your pool project for a reason. Family Leisure is there to supply you with the pool and it's really up to you to make certain everything is done right. So get ready for a project if you buy a pool here. It's afterwards that you really figure out what kind of a mountain you are about to climb dealing with the city permitting, inspections, and the literal mountain of sand. (We were told 6 tons, and the installer used about 3.5 tons on the pool. So we had 2.5 tons of extra sand sitting in our driveway for a couple of months until I could figure out what to do with it. All in all I understand it's better to have two much sand than not enough, but almost double is a little extreme. Also if your yard is as sloped as mine you will end up with a mountain of dirt too, which means a bobcat rental to level out.)

As far as being your own general contractor Family Leisure will provide you with an installer, you will find your own electrician, also pull your own permits for the pool, electricity, fencing, deck; electrical bonding of the water, pool wall, motor etc.; YOU will be responsible for all of this since YOU are the contractor for your pool listed with the city; and YOU will own the liability for anything not done right. I'm not saying beware, just be aware!

As far as the filter we bought the permasalt system. It's not really a saltwater system other than you pour some salt in the pool to help with electrolysis. It's a copper ion system that adds copper to the water which kills algae. My recommendation is to spend your money on a nicer raft and skip the permasalt. The chemicals are quite pricey compared to chlorine, and the copper turns my daughters hair green. We follow the instructions to a T and still have water bugs and an algae ring. I ended up having to buy a summer's worth of chlorine to supplement the permasalt system and when we do, all of our problems go away over night. You can buy a very similar looking system on Amazon for a lot cheaper if you really want a copper ionizer (and by similar I mean they say the chambers are interchangeable between the two systems and everything looks exactly the same less the color of the faceplate on the controller.), but for me once our copper chamber is up we are just going to save the money and maintain a clean, bug free, sterile pool with chlorine ; which Walmart sells under their HTH brand for next to nothing.

Our pool was installed by a third party, Zapien Installation. This was a husband and wife duo, they were awesome and I plan on just contacting them directly in the future for any major maintenance that needs done, liner replacement etc. You should request them if you can, just real good down to earth people!

To be fair with Family Leisure I don't think they anticipated this many sales this year, and got in over their heads. Personally I think they should consider offering a little money back to those of you having to wait until October or later after being told 3-4 weeks to install. We feel really lucky to finally be wrapping...

If I could give ZERO stars, I would. We purchased our spa From Family Leisure a couple of years ago and were very happy with the salesperson who helped us select the right one to fit our needs. However, last year we started having trouble with the heater not coming on. As our spa was under warranty, we called and spoke with the service manager about the heating issue and a problem with the display lighting not working correctly. We followed his directions and reset the system. This fixed the issue for several months. In November, it happened again. We called again and were told how backed up they were. We reluctantly scheduled for Tuesday the following week. Unfortunately, no one called and or showed. We did another reset and let it go until yesterday when we had the same issue once again. I called the service department to finally have our issue fixed for good. This time they were more than happy to tell me that my spa's warranty had expired a just a couple of weeks ago. I was then told that he was the service technician, and he could be on site the following day. He also stated that since this has been an ongoing issue, he would waive the service call, as he was going to be in the area anyway. He went on to explain how we would still owe for parts and labor and I agreed to his proposition. However, I did find it odd that we could get service so quickly, now that our spa was out of warranty. Today I received a call to verify that they would have their service technician out this afternoon. This time, I was told that there would be a charge for the service call and that they needed payment from me before anyone would even look at it. When I explained an agreement was made to wave the service call with their technician the day prior, the gentleman became agitated and rude stating there were no notes in their system about prior troubles. After giving him a few dates, he then said they did have some staffing problems and system notes were an issue. After all of that, he still refused to honor the agreement I had made with their technician the day prior. My point is that if your Spa is under warranty, don't expect them to be responsive. However, once the warranty runs out, they will be happy to take care of you after a $95 (pre-paid) service call with the hope of selling items that should have been taken care of during the warranty period. If you’re looking at spending 10k on a nice spa for your family, you should look elsewhere and avoid this place...

June 27, 2017: Bought a 33' swimming pool a month ago. Still not installed. My contract says 3 weeks out for installation. Called managers, not any help. Finally got a call from (the installer) out of Independence Mo. He said we were a go on Monday the 26th. So the wife and I take a vacation day from work. Sunday night the 25th at 9:30 P.M. the installer calls and says that his truck is broke down and he can't make it... Monday he calls and says that his truck is still in the shop and has been since SATURDAY....?? Ok, so why didn't he let us know then so we could go onto work Monday? Not to mention the installer cancelled on us three times on great weather days. So wife calls Family Leisure and asks if we can get another installer to come out. Manager Mark or Martin (he used both names) said to wait for the installer he'd be calling soon. When she told him that we used vacation days from work and that it's going on over a month he commenced to tell her that the contract says up to 5 weeks.. however our contract says 3. And the managers at Family Leisure were absolutely no help and kind of rude . He did tell us that he could take the pool back from us with a 15% restocking fee which would have cost us about $900. You just get the idea that the managers do not care at all. The next step will be getting ahold of a corporate number to get this resolved. They have no problem taking the money for the pool but not finishing the job in installing it...UPDATE a few days later... The installer we had didn't think he could install a pool if there was ANY rain what so ever. He ended up installing our pool (because we made him come out) after it rained and it worked out great. We understand that if it's "muddy" or to severe or lightening then they can't do it, but we think they were just not wanting to come the 40 minutes... the installer told us that Family leisure need more installers. Which I definitely would agree. I will say that the installers did do a great job, when they did it. I would not recommend buying a pool from this company. Only because of the installation problems. It makes me leery about buying anything there now because if there is a problem I feel like there will not be a resolution. Kind of sad because they do have...