Complaint Review: Terminix - Memphis Tennessee

I have a rental house up in Ball Ground, GA. I used to live there, and knew there was a rodent issue. So when Terminix, who inherited my termite protection after I moved out had tenants in, mentioned having a pest control service where they would rid the place of rodents I was thrilled and began to pay them a recurring fee via automatic deduction from a credit card. Their guarantee was that they would return as many times a service period as needed, and would return on a scheduled basis to inspect and place traps if needed.

In December 2011 I was cleaning the house between tenants and found droppings in the bathrooms and drawers. I called Terminix and said I was stopping the service as it was clearly not working. They said that my previous tenant did not allow them in the house and that they would come out free of charge and work with my new tenants to make certain it was taken care of.

After some thought and conferring with the new tenants we decided to give them another chance. Some rodents were captured and we felt the situation was under control. Terminix continued to charge me and periodically come out. In July they told the tenants that there were signs of activity and that they needed to check the trap in the crawlspace (!!) to see if there was more activity. They left extra traps with the tenants, who also had to remove the bodies. (I found this out while speaking with my tenants. I was pretty outraged by that attitude compared to the service I receive in my Atlanta home from a different company).

I received the September rent with a lot of photos of issues that the tenants had encountered. One, the most recent issue, really concerned me. They described a smell of mold and mildew in the bathroom. Upon pulling the vanity from the back bathroom (which adjoins the other full bathroom that contains the jetted tub and shower) they saw a hole in the wall. They said that as they stood there, the largest rat they has ever seen walked in, looked at them, and ran out through that hole. There was evidence of major damage in the wall and droppings. He covered the hole and began to bleach the mold. He went into the other bathroom and removed the panel from the tub, whereupon he was quite knocked out by the horrendous odor of mold and rat urine. The jetted tub had ceased to work at this time as well.

Our belief was that the rats had punctured the hoses in the jetted tub, which operate under pressure and sprayed some water out as time went on and the damage increased (but before the tub stopped operating completely) which caused the extensive water damage.

After this was repaired, we found that the rodents had built nests, chewed the wiring in the furnace, and caused carbon monoxide to enter the home, creating a potentially deadly situation. For safety reasons, the technician disabled the furnace. The entire HVAC unit had to be replaced.

Facing a bill of nearly 10,000 after all this was done, I contacted them about their guarantee. I was told by several Terminix representatives, including their lawyer, that they cannot guarantee that rodents will not enter the home after their serviceman has left the premises. Their guarantee simply states that they will ensure rodents are removed at that time.

Obviously, this is not what they say in their materials, on the phone, or in their welcome email, which states that they prevent pests from entering the home. In addition, if the technician had actually inspected the property and shone his flashlight into the crawlspace, he would have seen evidence of infestation before it reached this stage and might have prevented such extensive costs.