Terminix

Something happened at the headquarters, however, so the scheduling was taken out of the hands of the technicians. Now scheduling is done automatically from headquarters, so the technicians cannot tailor the timing of the visits in such a way that they know the schedules of the people that they're spraying for. I live alone and if I'm gone during the day, for instance, they won't be able to get into the house. So I either have to change the appointment or my daily schedule, so I'm home to let them in when they come. Then my particular technician makes the phone call the night before he's coming, and I get a notification in email from the company. I put that on my calendar and then my technician calls the night before to just double-check.

Still, another problem is that I get an email that says I will have a call on such and such date, between the hours of such and such. It says, "You do not need to be home for this service. Just please secure any animals." But that is not true, and I have complained about this almost every time I get a service. I need somebody to be here to let the technician into the house because it's not external spraying only. He sprays around the perimeter of the house, but he also comes inside. I've shown this to Patrick every time, and we chuckle about it. The email communications of the company really need some close attention. It is annoying when year after year, you get communication that is not clear about what's gonna happen.

I don't have any complaints about the pest activity in the house, although I have had ants in my kitchen at a certain time of year. Patrick comes and puts out some little traps and that ceases. It's excellent. Last week, I had two mice in my garage, and the automatic door has some little cracks at the edge where they can get in. That's separate from my house, and Patrick put out some chemicals, and I found the dead mouse on the floor a couple of days after he was here. Overall, I would recommend Terminix. The service, the coverage, and the technician who comes to my house are wonderful.

The last time Terminix was out was for the pest control. They sprayed and they come about every three months. But when I had an appointment for the 27th, they were supposed to be there between 8:00 and 10:00. They sent an email about it. So, I got up really early and at 12 o’clock, they still hadn’t shown up. I called and I went through the automated thing. I said for scheduling and I was told that their schedule to come was in the 28th. Nobody contacted me and told me that.

This was the second time that has happened. It happened a long time ago, the same tech. So, I called and talked to a representative. She was so nice and kind. She said that they had a little trouble with their equipment for scheduling. She went through the whole thing and they were gonna send me a new time. However, I had a doctor’s appointment with the time they were gonna give me. She told me they could come March 13th for a termite inspection that I have once a year. I couldn’t take the date that she offered me and she looked but she didn’t have anything very soon. So, she said she would get with one out of Palestine. She was gonna get with them and have them send me one. So, I'm sure I'll get it very soon. I told her that the next time they schedule me, I'm going to call the day before and see if I'm still on schedule. Despite that, all the employees have been nice.

The technicians who came were all so nice too. I love them. The last one who came was fairly new. He was so nice and I gave him a 5-star. Also, the one before was a female and she was terrific. I'm satisfied with my experience with Terminix. It is a good warranty and I haven't had any more termites. Now, they leave little sticky things for me and most of the ones I see are in the garage. They said they would come out any time I call them, but the sticky thing takes care of it.

I've also had additional mosquito service over the summer months, but you have to manage expectations on that right. They guarantee 100% that they'll eliminate mosquitoes but there's no way that they can guarantee that. They might spray mine, but my neighbors don't spray and their mosquitoes will come into my neighbor. But it has brought down the mosquito population. It's 60% better.

Recently, they came to do the regular service which is part of the quarterly spray. The guy that showed up came on a day when it was kind of snowy. I asked him what really moved him to come that day. I didn't think it would be effective. Two weeks later, however, we had bed bugs and the cold weather helped to pull the insects closer to the warmth of the home. So when they sprayed, it actually had a very good outcome, which it was counter-intuitive to me, but once he explained it, it made sense. He was knowledgeable and quite helpful.

I've been doing Terminix for a couple of years now, and a total of four people have come. It is routinely the same people but they're not exactly the same person every time, like one after the other. I've had a couple of people that have called me on follow up. They wanted to do a bit more aggressively than usual and come and inspect the attic. Even though I've indicated a number of times that I'm not interested, still I've got phones back to back. Nevertheless, the communication with the reps has been good. I like the way that they give notification the day before and then the day that the person is coming in. The send me a text and they notify me. It gives me an opportunity to be able to be home or to reschedule if I wanted them to do some internal work and I'm not available.

I've had a couple of situations where I had to tell them to not do something. One of their techs said they were gonna come whether I was there or not but I like for them to spray in my garage and they can't do that if I'm not here. And they have the tendency to leave the gate open. They went up to a gate, the gate was closed. When they leave, close the gate back. These are all no-brainer things. If I had a Doberman in the yard, and it went out bit somebody, guess who's gonna get blamed. There were techs that were not as exemplary as they could be. Those kinds of things are petty issues.

Also, they raise the bill every year whether I like it or not. That kind of thing is kind of a wondering for me because they have a tendency just to put it in the bill. "We're gonna go up x amount next time," and then, I get the bill and then I read all the garbage that they throw in there. But those are really not too big of a deal. After all, they do pretty well with the bug service. I don't have bugs and it was just a matter of me finding the right guy. The very first guy I had as very good and he quit. Then, I've gone two or three and the guy I have now seems to be fairly reasonable and a little bit more customer-conscious.

I had three days if I wanted to cancel that contract or not and I remembered that in the conversations I had with their office, they offered a 10% discount for senior citizens. So I called back the following day and asked them to rewrite the contract because I wanted the 10% discount because it was significant. It would have been around $200. But the person I talked to was an underling and she didn't appear to listen to me as well as I thought she should have. She couldn't get ahold of or put me in touch with the right person. But I had three days before I was really bound to the contract. So then I called the headquarters. I skipped everybody and went right to the CEO. The CEO put me in contact with this group that represents them and of course, she was the right person to talk to. She so smoothly and immediately got it taken care of.

Everything worked out great. They certainly knew what they were doing. They must have had to come back four different times before they completed the job. I imagined that getting rid of those pests was much more difficult than some others. But they did a wonderful job and they seem to have eradicated the problem. The only drawback with Terminix is once I signed on to them, I've been getting an email from them every day and a half just to let me know that they're still alive and to reel me into something else. Nonetheless, I'm very happy with them and if I were to need them again, I wouldn’t hesitate in calling them. I would tell others to go to Terminix too.

First, he entered the house and walked all through it without taking his shoes off or using booties (we do no wear shoes in our house). Then he soaked the floors with whatever the spray was, it was wet for hours. Outside the windows were all a mess, the beehive was blows apart (all over my house). When the tech left we really started finding more issues. The first thing was brown drip stains on a kids stuffed toy (the box was under a window where he sprayed. As the the weeks have gone by we keep finding more and more drip stains all throughout our house on our carpet! Is Terminix going to pay for my carpets to be cleaned and refund my money (doubtful)?