Taylor sureTreat ٤+

Surprisingly unpolished app

Taylor Technologies is a meticulously reliable and detail-oriented company, whose precision and accuracy is renowned throughout its 94 years of existence. Pool owners, both personal and those of facilities, rely on its replicable chemical testing unmatched in the industry. So it’s with immense disappointment that this app is rife with programming errors and an unusable interface: The most notorious was the inability to type in a decimal point, since fixed. However, upon initial registration, the dropdown menu for STATE is unpopulated with any. (The workaround is to edit your profile afterward, at which point the dropdown menu is now magically populated with the US states.) The layout of the chemicals during manual input has no logical pattern, forcing users to navigate unintuitively from input field to field. The order (of importance) should be “FC, CC, TC” then “pH, acid demand, base demand,” then “alkalinity” and “calcium hardness” followed by “CYA.” Lastly, under profile, one’s name is listed, under CONTACT INFO, but under ACCOUNT OWNER is inexplicably listed a “Michael Caronna” followed by his Maryland phone number — which for all I know is his personal one. That alone is cause for alarm. For such an esteemed, nearly century-old institution to release such an unfinished, unprofessional, and (there’s no other word for it) lazily programmed app is beyond disappointing; it’s absolutely incomprehensible.

Disappointing and clearly untested

First disappointment is that you are required to make an account. This is basically a glorified calculator, there’s no need to require an account.

Second disappointment is that when I finally got to inputting my test results, I can’t actually enter the pH because when I try typing in that window, it brings up a numeric keypad keyboard that has no period/decimal point. That makes this app competently useless.

استجابة المطور ،

Thank you for your feedback. sureTreat requires an account to hold a record of a pool and its test history, as well as to recommend treatment products that would be carried by a local dealer. We have corrected the decimal input issue.

I don’t see the benefit of the App vs their website

I unsuccessfully tried to create an account on their website so I looked for the app, which did allow me to create an account (as an individual
pool owner). Data entry is exactly like the unlogged in web version as are the results and it’s straightforward. I really appreciate the service Taylor is trying to provide, but see my title.

I need to increase alkalinity according to both the app and website, but on their website I was told how much baking soda to add to my pool, but the app does not provide that information. (I never studied (or learned) much water chemistry and I don’t want to learn now how to calculate what I need to make adjustments.) I suspect the website will do other calculations as well.

I appreciate that I can get those results from the website so I can avoid Leslie’s always trying to upsell me unnecessary stuff like phosphate remover and pool clear.

If the app allows one to keep a history, I couldn’t detect a way to determine that it does. Spreadsheets are great for that, but I’d prefer that the app kept that data.

The app and the website are a great service for pool/spa owners and the Taylor products are the best I’ve found, so I am not so much complaining as I am wishing for some enhancements.