Polaris Vac-Sweep 280 Pressure-Side In-ground Pool Cleaner, Double Venturi Jet Powered, 31ft of Hose with an All Purpose Debris Bag

We had our original Polaris sweep for 20+ years before it finally needed to be retired. No need to get the more expensive sweep the 280 is great!

Third one in 36 years. Work great!

Excellent product. Works amazingly well. Customer support for me was above and beyond.

Soon after putting into service, this Polaris was traveling either on its side or nose up. I finally discovered that the head float had a leak and was full of water. I chatted with Amazon service on November 22, 2024, and they said that they contacted the manufacturer, and that the manufacturer would contact/help me within in 24 hours with the replacement of the damaged part. Well, it has been "30 days" since my chat, and the manufacturer still has not contacted me, nor sent me a replacement head float.Very poor service from the manufacturer or seller, and even poor service from Amazon for not following up with our chat. This head float is not a very expensive part, but for a $645 purchase, I would have expected a response of some sort.

Works great so far, really enjoying the results of using it. Our pool has never looked cleaner. Hoping the cleaner lasts a good long time! We have only had a couple of weeks.

I ordered this pool cleaner June 8, 2020. It arrived June 13. It went into operation on the 15th. On opening the box, the sidewall connector was cracked. No problem, I had an old one from my previous Polaris 280 that was still good. Big mistake. That was an omen. I should have returned the Polaris 280 pronto. But, I needed a pool cleaner. I had a connector. So I kept it. I noticed immediately that the new cleaner was not as robust or as efficient as my previous two. However, I figured I'd keep it and assumed that like so many things, the quality in recent years has diminished. But, as time passed, the pool cleaner got increasingly less effective. It got to the point that the cleaner would run 8 hours and NOT clean the pool. It would float above the bottom. It would float upside down. It would get stuck so bad that the wheels on the new Polaris are now scuffed up to the point that it look a year old. It would not go out of the deep end and when I pulled it to the shallow end myself, it would travel over leaves on the bottom of the pool and not suck them up and immediately travel back to the deep end. Finally, after I tried everything I knew to do, I called Amazon customer service on August 31. The rep was nice though not really helpful. Referred me to the seller - In The Swim Pool Supplies. The seller was not help helpful since the purchase was beyond the 30 day limit. The seller referred me to the manufacturer. I spoke with Jeremy at the Polaris customer service number [(800) 822-7933]. After a lengthy discussion, Jeremy said the Polaris pool cleaner needed to be repaired and that I would have to take it to an authorized service center. The closest place Jeremy found to my house was a one hour drive one way which mean that to drop it off and then pick it up, I'd have to drive 4 hours if traffic wasn't a problem. At one point, I think Jeremy was gonna replace the useless pool cleaner but his supervisor said no. I asked if they would pay postage to mail the non working device and he said no. So here I am, out $500-600 on a piece of crap and no one will help me. I asked for Polaris corporate number and no one will give it to me. I have had good service out of my first two Polaris 280 pool cleaners. Not this time. I have a booster pump and a liner pool. There was nothing in that pool that should have damaged the pool cleaner. Since it didn't work great right out of the box, I suspect what ever was wrong then only got worse.Buy at your own risk. If you don't return it before the 30 days after purchase is up, don't expect help from amazon, this seller or the manufacturer. I've wasted a lot of time trying to get help. Now I'm told I have to spend 4 more hours of my life on the road to go to an authorized repair center. In the mean time, I've been having to clean my pool manually despite spending a good bit of money on an automatic -pool cleaner. So disappointed with this purchase and even more disappointed with the pitiful customer service from amazon to seller to manufacturer.Update: Spoke with Mixer, customer service rep, at Fluidra yesterday. He listened patienty to my concerns and is sending a replacement pool cleaner. So thankful to find someone to help me with this. Mixer has renewed my trust in the company.

Excellent. The vacuum does a great job.

This Polaris 280 sweep is FANTASTIC! At least, so far.Moved into my home in 1978. It had an existing very large, approx. 20 X 40 modified kidney shaped plaster pool which was built in 1970. It has a very large shallow end which runs to an 8' depth near the diving board at the far end. We figure it holds somewhere between 34-36k gallons. At the time it had an old Arneson pool sweep which was totally useless, except for pushing around dirt and leaves along with very large pine needles from a neighbors 100' tall pine tree. In mid 80's I replaced all the pool equipment including the old sweep and got a Polaris, similar to this 280. At that time it seemed to work just O.K., with a constant need to re-adjust the rear thrust jet nozzle, wall water restrictor adjustment, sweep hose adjustment, etc. Also, trying to get the proper hose length was a big compromise between having not enough or too much because of the pool design. I was not impressed with this early Polaris model at all. Over time, parts replacement became quite costly...almost like replacing parts on my BMW. Then, in 2003 I replaced that unit with a JetVac which operated almost flawlessly up until about 2yrs ago and little by little parts needed replacing and the cost was outlandish because the product itself was no longer being produced and you became like a "captured prisoner" to the pool supply industry.I started doing some research with local pool supply stores, some pool maintenance people and with friends who had pools. And while everyone had different opinions, both pro and con about their pool sweep, they all agreed that replacing parts for these units was very costly. I finally looked at all the responses on Amazon and came to the conclusion that the 280 seemed like my best option.The unit arrived very promptly and in perfect condition by my trusty USPS delivery person and I was rather surprised to find that it was practically all put together in a nice neat package and there was little to do but slide it into the pool, make a check as to the appropriate speed of the tire rotation and off it went, climbing walls, steps...yes even up on my 2nd of 3 shallow end steps, with the sweep acting like some person was expertly controlling it. I just had to make one adjustment to the sweep hose, backing it off a bit so the tail would not shoot water out of the pool too much and everything else seems to be working wonderfully for the past month.All in all, I am extremely pleased with this unit to date and to have Amazon on my side with their ability to acquire both OME and "after market" parts at much more realistic prices than the local market is like having your "pool uncle" watching out for you. I can now readily see where a 4-wheel unit, like the Pentair model which I was also considering, would most likely not work as well in my pool. I do not believe that it would be nearly as agile in going up the steps like the Polaris. I am also glad that I decided not to get the 360 model which doesn't use a 3/4HP pressure side pump as it is only as good as your main filtration system. Even the local Leslie's store suggested my not opting for that unit, saying that most people find it does not have the abilities of the 280 with its own pump. One good thing with my old JetVac is that it had a "built-in" backup valve that worked flawlessly for the nearly 13 years I had it. Why Polaris doesn't design that part into their system is anyone's guess, but from what I've read about how many times people have had to replace it, I would think there are ulterior motives at play.