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A former All Black has been left more than $40,000 out of pocket after a pool company went bust.
Kāpiti Pool Services Limited, Pool and Spas Kāpiti Limited, and West Coast Pools were all put into liquidation this month.
TJ Perenara, who currently plays for the Māori All Blacks, and his wife, Greer, are in the process of building a home and had paid one of the companies to install their pool. They expected to lose more than $40,000 they had already paid the company.
“We are angry and frustrated, but we know times are tough right now,” Perenara said in a TikTok video.
The former two companies were owned by Arron and Julie Pearson and the latter only by Arron Pearson.
The Pearsons had since separated.
“At my time there I sold $4.2 million worth of spas,” one former employee said.
“The business was making money – good money.”
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Before he quit the business earlier this year, he said there were about three people who wanted their deposits back because it didn’t seem like the pools would get installed but Pearson didn’t have the money to pay them back.
Kāpiti woman Sharon Stephenson said it took West Coast Pools almost a year to instal her pool despite being told it would take six months at the most.
“We didn’t hear anything from Arron after we paid the deposit – we actually had to chase him four months later because we hadn’t heard a thing.”
There were alleged construction delays, shipping delays, and then he ignored emails and calls.
The pool was finally installed in Janaury this year and despite it being silver when they’d ordered black, Stephenson said by that stage they didn’t care.
ROSA WOODS/STUFF
The Kāpiti coast businesses were put into liquidation in August.
By week two the pump started playing up. Calls to Pearson were ignored again and claimed his staff member who needed to fix it was sick.
Pearson also refused to give her a break-down of costs – leaving Stephenson in the dark about what costs had covered what.
“He then forgot to order our pool cover so that was another drama and to add insult to injury, tried to charge us $1800 for a consent, when we queried that, he immediately dropped it to $800. My husband spoke to the council who said the cost was actually $343. We went back with that information and he stopped asking for payment.”
Stephenson had approached the NZ Pool Industry Association, which had no previous complaints about the company.
“Several times we thought about walking away but the thought of losing our deposit meant we had to hang in there and hope for the best.
“All in all, it was an exhausting, stressful, negative experience. I got the feeling that Arron was distracted, out of bandwidth and was having issues the entire year we dealt with him. If he’d been honest about delays and issues it would have made things much easier from a customer perspective.”
Another former employee said he was hired as a branch manager for one of the businesses at the beginning of the year and left in July after, he says, he was asked to change serial numbers on pools and spas the company did not own.
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The company sold and installed pools and spas in the lower North Island. (File photo)
“A particular pool I had sold, he had taken the serial number off and put it on to one of the shop models, for what reason I do not know, but it was still owned by the company and he wanted me to organise the install.
“Then I asked him to make me redundant.”
But he knew from day one that something wasn’t right with the business.
“I was just taking complaint after complaint after complaint.”
Pearson has not responded to efforts to contact him.
Iain Bruce Shephard and Jessica Jane Kellow of BDO had been appointed liquidators. In the first liqudation report for Pool and Spas Kāpiti they said historically, the business had traded well and made reasonable profit.
“In recent times the company has suffered as a consequence of reduced demand for spa pools. The company struggled through cashflow constraints, eventually becoming unable to keep current with its suppliers.”
Before the costs of liquidation, Pool and Spas Kāpiti had an overall shortfall for creditors of $384,023, for Kāpiti Pool Services had a surplus of $56,818 and for West Coast Pools there was a shortfall of $417,065.
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