Terminix

Good job. Communicate appts well. Tendency to try to up sell while at residence. Once I met with manager the issue was resolved

I had an extremely difficult and convoluted relationship with Terminix for several months. I came in contact with them when they beat out the other companies in the race to get my business once I discovered I had bedbugs. They first sent an employee to inspect my house, and after I showed them the evidence of the infestation, they described the services that they would offer me. Their treatments for bedbugs consist of spraying pesticides in your home once every two weeks until the bugs are gone, then you get a 6-month guarantee that if the bugs return, they will come back for additional treatments. They said that their way is better than other companies because the customer does not have to prep her home (I did not know it at the time, but this is immediately a red flag- any company that knows what they are doing will have a thorough list of instructions for you to follow to adequately prepare the house for thorough treatment). I believed the promises they told me during the initial visit, signed the contract, and paid $1300 upfront. Soon after treatments started, I came to realize that the standard of work that these technicians provided to me was not only far below industry standard, but also much lower quality than they initially made me believe when they were pitching their services to me. (For example, they said the initial treatment would take over 2 hours but they only spent 37 minutes. Things were hanging off the bed, which ran contrary to their customer instructions, and I could see that they had not even moved the pillows on my couch, among a long list of other deficiencies.) The technicians were very nice but not experienced at all. They were frequently multiple hours late for appointments or canceled at the last minute. Once they even assigned me a random appointment without consulting me. I quickly learned that the quick response time they showed me at the beginning when they were trying to get my business was not indicative of the way they run the rest of their company. They left my calls unanswered, and when I did connect with them, they quickly dismissed my complaints. The national office and local offices hand off disgruntled customers between them like hot potato, which means it requires very strong, organized, and consistent advocacy to fix your problems. Eventually, I had to break my contract with Terminix and begin work with a different exterminator that was experienced and would put honest effort into their work. Unfortunately, all the bad reviews in the world, including this one, do not make much difference in impacting their sales. Their prospective customers are desperate to sign on and get relief from their problems as quickly as possible rather than take the extra time to carefully review their options, just like I failed to do. When I first signed with Terminix, I was exhausted from being kept up at night with painful bites and worried about putting others at risk of infestation. My main criterion was to work with whoever could come out to my house the soonest and make the problem go away fast. Two months later, I still had bed bugs, I was tangled deep within Terminix predatory business tactics, and found I had to start learning a great deal about advocating for myself as a consumer. Unfortunately, the business practice model of Terminix relies on people being too exhausted to advocate for themselves. If you are trying to find a company for bed bugs, pause and take a breath. I know it feels like an embarrassing and urgent problem, but it happens to the best of us. There is a lot of fear-based content online to drive you quickly toward low-quality exterminators, but go by word-of-mouth from trusted sources and look up companies accredited by Better Business Bureau. A couple of days of research on the front end may save you months of stress later on.

Ok

Finally resolved service and contract issues after months of miscommunication.

They do good work and are timely and communicative. They are expensive for anything beyond basic service though

Satisfied

Actual technician does great and has good communication.

Good

Expensive but decent

Friendly tech.