Complaint Review: Terminix Laguna Hills

We hired Laguna Hills Terminix to tent a house we own in 1999.  Since then we have been billed an "annual service fee" that really means you can call them after you discover termites yourself.  They now tell me their contract says they dont need to inspect, and they have 6 months to do any treatment work if you happen to discover termites some day in the future.  They are counting on DUMB consumers like me to not read the fine print.  

My home was under contract for termites for 7 years and I thought they were doing annual inspection services (like the invoices said).  After seeing termite damage showing up I called, another company and had it inspected.  They found active swarms and extensive damage.  Terminix said they didnt see anything and refused to come back.  I then Hired a THIRD company to inspect - and they found termites too.  I called YTerminix 12 times over 5 months and nobody ever came back to fix it or tent the house. 

Finally I hired the last termite company that inspected to do the work, and make the repairs that should not have been neccessary.  $7100 lesson learned. 

I took them to OC small claims court and they said "under the contract we had 6 months to do any needed work, and the customer chose to get someone else to do it, so we aren't paying".  The judge say right through that since it was obvious I had called them and gave them every opportunity to fix the problems, and waited 5 months before hiring someone else.