Why You Can’t Find Hayward or Pentair Products Online

Charlie Ramirez

October 23, 2024

7 Minute Read

If you’re wondering why you can’t find Hayward or Pentair products online anymore, wonder no more. The answer is simple: they don’t want you to. Recently, both Hayward and Pentair announced that they are following suit with Zodiac and ditching the internet.

Though they vary, both Pentair and Hayward are introducing policies that curtail internet sales and limit product availability for the pool owner. How will this affect you, the pool owner? Let’s dig a little deeper.

Zodiac/Jandy

Trade Grade

Before we dive into the deep end with Hayward and Pentair, let’s review Zodiac’s Trade Grade Series Policy. In late September 2018, Zodiac announced that they were prohibiting internet sales for the Jandy Pro Series line. This line includes more than 400 unique products. According to them, this policy halts the Internet’s ability to sell Jandy products below MAP price and encourages pool owners to purchase locally.

A MAP price is simply the minimum that resellers agree not to advertise below. This includes brick- and- mortar stores and online retailers, like us.

MAP pricing ensures people aren’t saturating the market with underpriced items. However, with the likes of Amazon, pool manufacturers are changing their tune. Hence, the Trade Grade Policy.

In short, they want to eliminate pool owners’ ability to find products online for cheaper than they would find in local stores. This allows local stores to price their pumps at their discretion. (And oftentimes, priced a lot higher than you can find online.)

Although they claim that they want the pool industry to thrive for generations, they are crippling the homeowner’s ability to purchase quality pumps at reasonable prices conveniently.

Hayward

“Expert” Line

This year, Hayward is introducing its “Expert Line”. The “Expert Line? includes more than 900 different Hayward products!

“It’s a strategic decision for the long-term health of Hayward as well as our pool pro partners,” says Dave MacNair, vice president of marketing for Hayward. “Hayward’s business and our brand reputation is built on decades of partnership with trade dealers. Those are the people who are selecting the right products to put into people’s backyards; they’re the people who are installing those products correctly; they’re the people servicing them to make sure they perform at a high level. That’s the foundation for Hayward; we have to continue to build that foundation. Everything else flows from that.”

However, in my opinion, the name is a little misleading. Firstly, Hayward’s equipment does not actually require an expert technician. In fact, the products in the “Expert Line” are the same equipment from previous years.

So, what exactly are the differences? – How and where can you buy Hayward products and what about the warranty period? Image result for hayward expert line

For starters, you can only purchase their “Expert Line” from a local authorized pool professional. So, neither from us nor anywhere else online. Additionally, Hayward is also requiring that you hire a Totally Hayward pool professional for the installation.

By adhering to these two rules, Hayward now offers a three year (or more) warranty.

It’s a little ironic that Hayward describes their “Expert Line” as, “…offering [sic] the ultimate in quality, choice, and value,” when in reality, they are limiting the buying choices for pool owners.

Open Line

Still, unlike Zodiac, Hayward also chose to keep some of their products online.

The Hayward Open Line is the Hayward products they are allowing you to purchase online. Pretty straightforward, right? But here’s the catch- they raised their prices across the board. Fifteen percent, to be exact!

So, not only do you not have the freedom to purchase all of their products online, but they are also limiting our ability to price the ones we can sell reasonably. So, it’s a win-win for the trade industry, but not so much for pool owners.

Open Line products still have a warranty, however, just not as long. Hayward limits the warranty period for the Hayward Open Line to a single year and to defective parts only.

Pentair

TradeGrade Policy

Effective from October 1, 2019, Pentair is rolling out their version of, “I, too, am leaving the internet.”

To sum up their policy: see Zodiac.

More specifically, only qualified pool professionals (such as pool builders, brick and mortar retailers, and/or pool service companies) can sell TradeGrade products. No online retailers.

I mean, let’s rephrase. You CAN sell Pentair TradeGrade products online, however, there are repercussions for both the seller (us) and buyer (you).

If you purchase a TradeGrade product online, Pentair limits the warranty to 60 days. For more details on the Pentair TradeGrade Policy, click HERE.

Addressing Their Concerns

Installation Errors

One of the many reasons why Pentair and Hayward are moving forward with these policies is to curb the number of installation errors. This is a valid concern for us as well.

However, for us, reducing the number of installation errors doesn’t necessarily equate to banning customers from certain purchase platforms. Yes, address the issues, but try not to penalize pool owners in the process.

Addressing the number of installation errors is two-fold.

Pricing

First, why do pool owners want to install their own equipment? The first reason is that they’re saving time and money. Depending on where you live, finding a reliable pool technician is difficult. Then, when you do find one, you run into issues regarding time and money. Do they have time to fit your specific needs into their schedules? If so, are they charging you a fair amount for the job?

Not to mention, because there isn’t MAP pricing for installations, pool technicians can charge whatever they feel like for labor. There isn’t a governing agency on fair pricing in the field. As a result, people often resort to taking care of their pool themselves. In fact, we hear from those pool owners more often than not.

To be fair, there are pool owners who, if possible, simply PREFER to handle their own pool equipment installations and pool maintenance.

Content

Secondly, are manufacturers doing a good job of providing customers with the necessary tools to install and maintain their pool equipment properly? Or, is the information that they provide simply confusing or not written clearly?

Over the years, one of the things our content team has learned is that people like videos. Sure, it’s nice to have written instructions on how to install a pump. However, a video showing the steps has much more value and success. So, there are things pool manufacturers can be doing to curb installation errors that don’t require penalizing the pool owner or unnecessarily raising prices.

What INYO Can Offer Pool Owners

Content Value

If I’m being honest, as an online retailer, it’s hard not to take these new policies personally. Although we can’t speak for other online retailers, I can positively say that we have a history of working directly with manufacturers like Hayward and Pentair to ensure our customers are receiving top-quality service before and after the sale.

One thing that truly separates us from other online retailers, brick and mortars, and local pool technicians is the amount of content we provide to pool owners. In fact, we take pride in the blog articles, how-to guides, pool-side chats, and troubleshooting videos we create. For example, if you purchase a Pureline motor from us, you will also receive a how-to guide on how to install your new motor on both 115V and 230V. We also include links to videos that walk you through each installation.

In fact, it’s ironic that Hayward, specifically, forbids us from selling their “Expert Line”. Meanwhile, this past summer, their technicians were recommending their customers to contact us for technical support on their products.

When we questioned Hayward about this, they flew down to our offices in Florida just to place the blame on their third party technicians. In short, we’re not qualified to actually sell their products BUT we are qualified to tackle their technical support calls.

Comparable Products

In addition to our content, we also provide replacement options for your pool equipment. In addition to the equipment Hayward, Pentair, and Zodiac are allowing us to sell, we also carry other brands like PureLine, Raypak, Waterway, and Speck.

With the introduction of PureLine Brands, we’re able to provide pool equipment at lower prices that don’t compromise on quality. If you are searching for new or replacement pool equipment, think of PureLine. PureLine has a variety of products from inground and above ground pumps, salt systems, filter valves, replacement cartridges, pool covers, and more.

Pureline warranties their equipment for at least one year and they also provide end-to-end support via instructional videos and chat customer support.

There are some things we absolutely always recommend a licensed professional install. However, we believe with the right direction and support, a large majority of pool owners can become their own pool support.

If you’re looking for reliable and fair-priced pool pumps, contact us via our chat services on our website, and let our technicians help you find the right part.

Troubleshooting Topics

Controls / Automation

Chlorinators

Skimmers / Drains

Need Replacement Parts?

Swimming Pool Products

22 responses to “Why You Can’t Find Hayward or Pentair Products Online”

Richard

January 7, 2020

Thank you for this article. It explains a few things. In the past I’ve not had much difficulty finding Pentair parts on Amazon and for a better price in store. The problem being in that I could find very few Pentair parts in local stores. I noticed recently that the Pentair parts on Amazon and from local retailers had become much more expensive. Worse, both from Amazon and a local retailer, they were showing the part I needed, but I was shipped or ordered and sold the wrong part. INYO pools was able to agree on the part I needed and I obtained it fairly quickly. I’m somewhat of a DIY person simply because of the number of incompetents running around out there.

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Victor Kach

February 15, 2020

Thanks. This was very informative. I guess I know what to do when I need to replacement my pool hardware. Thanks, again.

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HarlowP.

April 19, 2020

Wow. Atrocious behavior on the part of Pentair. And ultimately counter-productive. Some Chinese outfits will swoop in to fill the need and at lower prices and ultimately drive Pentair out of business. Sure, it will just be knock-off filter cartridges at first, but soon they’ll sell everything.

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1. Joseph
  
  November 15, 2020
  
  I wouldn’t be so sure.
  
  These major companies still have everyone else beat on quality. Pentair is still the only company with a variable flow pool pump, and still the only company with a pump that can detect when it fails to prime and shut off to prevent it from damaging itself. Hayward still has the most hydraulically efficient pump, filter, and gas heater, and the most reliable salt system. Jandy still has the most user-friendly automation, and in the next month or so, they’re coming out with the AquaLink TCX, which will be the most affordable automation upgrade on the market.
  
  The Chinese companies still haven’t figured out that the diffuser and seal plates should be separate parts for reliability purposes. That being said, most consumers don’t realize that the reason their single speed motors went from lasting 20 years, to 10 years, to a year is that manufacturing moved from the US, to Mexico, to China, because consumers refused to allow prices to increase with inflation. Now, even the most reliable motors on the market only last 10 years, before the electrolytic reaction between the stainless steel bolts and the aluminum end bells (which were steel when they were made in the US) finally causes the frame of the motor to disintegrate. So it’s possible they’ll start buying more Chinese crap, and wind up replacing their variable speed pumps every year.
  
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  1. Valentin martinez
    
    March 18, 2021
    
    I agree the distribution system protects the entire industry from fly by nighters. Who are not interested in quality products. You get what you pay for
    
    Reply
Anonymous

August 17, 2020

Finally,save me the embarrassing of telling the customer how much I pay for the part in my local distributor when they getting it for less in the internet

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1. Matthew Simmons
  
  August 21, 2020
  
  Glad to see their plan is working out for somebody. 😄
  
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  1. Andrew
    
    December 22, 2020
    
    To whomever wrote this article…. cry me a river you little baby. You internet retailers have been screwing us trade guys over for years. And let’s be very clear, us trade guys are not expensive you guys are just super super cheap. In many cases cheaper than what we can get it wholesale. And not because you care about the do-it-yourself homeowner. But because you can. Because your willing to sacrifice margins for insane amounts of volume. And over the years you guys have done nothing but enable a bunch of cheap inexperienced DIY’ERS who have absolutely no idea what their doing. Subsequently creating safety hazards and causing a nightmare for these manufacturers tech support. So in the process internet retailers have lowered the standards in the industry by facilitating inexperienced homeowners doing their own repairs, destroyed the brick and mortar mom and pop sector because they can’t compete with online retailers who are buying direct from the manufacturers at the tune of 10’s of millions of dollars and probably much more than that, and have significantly impacted the service/repair side of the industry negatively and im suppose to feel bad for you… I hope you guys burn to the ground.
    
    Reply
    1. RM
      
      January 2, 2021
      
      Over the last 7 years I have “trained” more experts like you that were absolutely clueless, installing flow sensors backward, trying to charge me $2000 for a Hayward pool filter system where the “expert” had unscrewed a rod. I fixed that 3 years ago and it is still working. These self proclaimed experts like you also have year, over 7 years, to sell me the right replacement filter as specified by Hayward. Maybe the mom and pop operations should clean up their act and assure that those “experts” coming to my home know what they are doing and are not at best fools and at worst crooks. If that were the case I would not be forced to pull the plug as of 1/1 2021 and start servicing my own pool, which effectively I have done since 7 years by cleaning up messes left by the highly rated local operators. Local operators have their place if they are honest and know what they are doing – good luck finding one in Central FL.
      
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      1. Bluescreen
        
        March 19, 2021
        
        Awesome! And I agree 100%. I have yet to find a true expert in the field that a) Knew what they were doing. b) Didn’t try to blow smoke up my a$$ with some concept or terminology that they thought they could fool me with.
        
        I tell everyone of these knuckleheads, (and I try to avoid interacting with them if at all possible), if I am paying a premium price, I expect a premium service. Yet I continue to find their foul ups or something got missed. Come on!
    2. BS
      
      February 25, 2021
      
      I call bull! They have implemented MAPP which controls pricing. So it’s not about undercutting, it’s about convenience and quality. I’m able to find pretty much everything online, so I’m not sure if Pentair/Hayward walked back on this change, but whether I buy online or in the store, I don’t need a “pool professional” to service/replace my equipment. I find it more problematic, in fact. I’ve had to fix so many problems in my pool because of professional installs. Now that I’m maintaining my system it’s running flawlessly!
      
      I have a pool company that cleans my pool and does chemicals on a weekly basis, but that’s where it ends. My old motor recently failed and I replaced with with a new variable speed motor. 4 screws and electrical. I actually re-ran the electrical from the previous “pro” install which was exposed to the elements. It took maybe a half hour to do the whole job. The pool company wanted to charge me $1k to do that job. What a racket! (Don’t tell me you aren’t expensive!) I’m not saying EVERYONE should be working on their own equipment, but there are plenty of owners who are DIYers/technically inclined that don’t need a pro. This stuff isn’t rocket science where you need skilled labor.
      
      Reply
      1. Pool Company
        
        February 10, 2023
        
        You went to the wrong company. We have been around for over 18 years and charge about $125-175 (1 year labor warranty) to do a job like that. I know for a fact that most pool companies in our area charge similar prices so maybe don’t make blanket statements about “you guys” being so expensive. Learn to ask the right questions and hire a reputable company.
    3. Jerry
      
      April 24, 2021
      
      Pool Service owner here. Couldn’t have been said any better. Should we feel bad for Inyo, In the Swim, etc. They’ve been taking $ out of our pockets for years while their customers beg for installation at bargain prices. I won’t install anything I don’t sell.
      
      Reply
    4. Dub
      
      April 5, 2022
      
      I am a DIY on EVERYTHING and I guarantee I can do it better than any of the so called “professionals”. This is not rocket science by any means. Basically you gouge the customer and this pisses you off. You are the cry baby.
      
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      1. Tom
        
        December 15, 2023
        
        I bet you can’t . You don’t know what equipment stinks and what is great. Bet you don’t know the failure points of every price of equipment made. I do. Do you know all codes relating to maximum pipe flow rate and electrical codes. To try and say you know more than a guy with 24 years in the field 6 days a week shows you no not much
S

October 3, 2020

I hate to say it but online guys you have had your day in the sun. You wrecked the possibility of us Feild business making any profit on mark up for the past 15 years. Buy you coming in a almost zero profit just to collect your percentage back at the end of the year from the manufactures it has killed all the Feild elope from marking anything up more than 10 percent.
Times change. The manufacturers wouldn’t have gone through some much trouble if the online sales were not turkey the root of the problem

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Gene

November 12, 2020

I guess I’d have a bit more sympathy for this silly policy if the high-priced “pool professional” who tended the pool at my new house for the prior owners had not left a mess that’s taken months to sort out. Even so, as someone else said, tactics like this are invitations to others to replace them in the market. They’re in trouble.

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Joseph

November 15, 2020

Jandy, Hayward and Pentair aren’t doing this to help the service industry. If they cared about that, they wouldn’t have allowed online retailers to kill them off so much in the first place. The real reason they’re doing this is to cut costs. If people buy a product online and install it themselves, and have problems with that product, they call that company’s customer support line. If they buy it from a professional and have that professional install it, and have problems, they call back that professional. Keeping a large tech-support staff employed is expensive. Whether or not INYOpools provides good support or not is immaterial so long as their customers are calling Hayward, Pentair, and Jandy clogging up their phone lines. Requiring their products to be purchased from professionals is a cost reduction strategy for them.

This doesn’t result in retailers jacking up prices either. MAP pricing basically becomes MSRP, because physical retailers still compete with one another. Take for instance the Hayward Navigator pool cleaners. Most retailers sell these for the MAP price, even though this results in a poultry profit margin of 14%. After you deduct franchise fees and employee commission, only 2% of the sale price is “profit”. That “profit” goes toward paying hourly pay, and keeping the lights on. The actual profit on these cleaners comes from the labor on repairing them as they break down. Even items with better margins only have a 30% margin, which gets knocked down to 18% after franchise fees and commission. Once again, retailers do not jack up prices on these items, and the real profit comes from labor.

Speaking of labor, as anyone who isn’t a communist knows, there doesn’t need to be a government agency ensuring fair pricing. The thing that ensures fair pricing is called “supply and demand”. Incompetents are in great supply, but no one wants them, so their labor is cheap. People who attended all of the training courses are in short supply, and those are who people want. As a result, their labor increases in value. Fair pricing is the market price. If someone is charging you above the market price, you find someone who charges market value. If no one charges that little, I have some bad news for you about what market price in your area actually is.

Part of the problem for this is aging. For decades, K-12 education has been pumping out propaganda that if you learn a trade, you’re a loser who will live a in trailer. People in their 20s and 30s don’t know trades, and the people who know these trades are all retiring. The introduction of new technology like automation and programmable variable speed pumps is also learning-curve-ing out of existence some of these older workers. As a result, qualified technicians are becoming increasingly rare, and thus expensive.

At the end of the day, so long as online purchasers primarily DIY, mess up installs, and clog up tech support lines, policies like this will proliferate. Hayward, Pentair, and Jandy don’t care about physical stores anymore than they do online stores. They want to reduce their own costs in order to drive up profits. Requiring the involvement of professionals is an easy way for them to reduce the amount of callers.

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Ben

December 12, 2020

What he👆 said!!!

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Geekshot

February 17, 2021

What a racket. Pentair and hayward quality are questionable at times. Their tech is dated and fragmented for their automation. I built a better control system with open source, arduino, and a raspberry pi for under $100. Modernize or die. In no way do they care about brick and mortar retailers it’s about monopoly and profits.

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Anonymous

July 20, 2021

This is a load of crap. For years I have had to deal with, “I can get it online cheaper.” Your almost always selling cheaper then wholesale (my cost). You cripple small business. The only thing this has done is stop you from damaging the industry. Thanks to Pentair and Hayward, I don’t have compete with online pricing.

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1. Educated Consumer
  
  August 21, 2021
  
  So charge a fair price to install stuff that your customer (or you!) purchase online. When you stop buying from your supplier, they’ll lower their prices. The entire industry is rotten to the core. Programs such as “Trade Grade” and “Expert Line” are almost certainly antitrust violations. This is a class action suit waiting to happen.
  
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