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? 10/01-G1 (TE7-77). I am an employee of Terminix, and I think this site is excellent. Please continue to let consumers know the truth. As an employee, I can tell you that even we don’t get the truth.
California 10/01-G1 (TE7-76). I am an ex-Terminix employee, who still hears all the bad stories. I think it’s very unfortunate that they are like this. Only for the simple reason that I am still in the pest control industry, thank God with another company; but all these allegations do give the rest of us decent people a bad name.
Georgia 9/01-G1 (TE7-75). My husband also worked for Terminix until August of this year. I agree many accounts were missed and the management does not seem concerned. My husband was a Sentricon technician and was made to go out and service pest control accounts when he had never even been trained in pest control. All I have to say about Terminix is I would find a company that I could trust, and Terminix is not that company.
Ohio 9/01-G1 (TE7-74). My husband worked for Terminix until a month ago. Yes, the techs miss appointments, and a lot of them do NOT know what they are doing. Why? Because they are given false information from their superiors who are into NUMBERS, NUMBERS, NUMBERS. They are supposed to make 14 stops in an 8-hour day, try fitting quality work plus driving time in there. You are lucky if you can stay 10 minutes per stop. He finished out last month, and they withheld his paycheck from him, too. He just picked it up today....a whole whopping $21 for 2 weeks worth. They say it is their “policy” when someone quits. We are pursuing this further.
? 9/01-E1 (TE7-73). I've just spent an hour going through your website and reading all the crap that is on it. Amazing! I never quite realized the full extent of the problems Terminix has until visiting your website.
I have heard numerous complaints as well as seeing some in my own branch. I have seen where old customers are pushed aside in order to get new business accounts. Terminix is all about new business at the expense of present customers. The biggest daily concern is in new sales - pushing all the sales managers with an estimated daily budget and verbal abuse from the regional manager as well as the regional sales manager. The company also does not release members of management that they deem somewhat incompetent - they simply move the morons from branch to branch (this only applies to branch and sales managers). As far as service managers are concerned, they really can't replace them as easily. Most of the qualified techs that work for the company wouldn't take the job - they usually make more than that and only work about 10 hrs a day, rather than the 12 or so for management. Service managers almost never get a promotion; any new promotion comes from the sales staff. They usually go to sales manager first, then to a branch manager - as long as they had outstanding numbers in resurrecting the sales department they inherited. I have even been told on occasion to miss a regular, old customer in order to get to a new customer, and have done it. The reason is because of the way a tech gets paid - a commission/salary basis. If you were a tech, would you go to a $35 monthly customer, or would you go to a new customer who is paying Terminix $200-$250 for an initial service visit? Because a tech gets paid up to 25% of a customer's charge, they will always take the one with more money. As far as people having problems with requests for extra service, there is one main reason - we don't get paid to do them. For example, a quarterly customer pays Terminix one time in 3 months for service; and we as techs also only get paid to go to your house only once in 3 months. So if you had a problem with ants at you regular service time, we would get paid to go to your house. A month later, if you have a hornets nest that was not there last month and you call us to come out and take care of it, that tech is not getting paid for it. Any wonder why so many extra customer requests fall through the cracks each month?
? 9/01-E1 (TE7-72). Ugh. I looked at your web site, and it makes me sick. At every instance, I have seen these practices go on. What is really pathetic is this company is stealing money and making people sick, all under the disguise of a company that honors God in all it does! Give me a break. I can tell people who post here don’t just have a beef with Terminix, that it goes far beyond that to either being personal or ethically abrasive.
For starters, doesn’t Terminix TELL people what Dursban does? Basically, it’s a residual powder which is supposed to be lightly sprayed into a crack or a small void. I’ve seen people haphazardly puff that stuff out of their hand duster against sides of houses and whatnot. Anyway, Dursban has a residual life span of over four months. Four months, and it’s a powder which is subject to being swept up by the wind and is EASILY airborne. My field trainer sprayed some in a guy’s basement; and when we went upstairs, I could see a steady cloud of it floating around the ceiling. My problem is basically what happens when this gets into your system. Does it rot away your organs for four months? Is it a carcinogen? All interesting things employees AND customers should be informed of but never are. We just need to go by the label which says “CAUTION avoid eye contact and harmful if swallowed.”
To any customer reading this site who might be wondering what pesticides are safe, as a former employee, I’ll tell you... NONE OF THEM. They’re made to kill things... they harm organisms and they do it whether that organism is human, insect, rodent, or whatever.
If you’re a Terminix customer, make sure you ask your tech what he used at your house. Dursban has a musky smell that tickles the back of your throat. There’s no reason to smell that airborne, as it’s supposed to be a crack and crevice treatment.
But at least customers can sleep well knowing they have it 10 times better off than employees. The crap I was forced to endure and the stuff I saw go on was abominable. I wish I could get into individual accounts from the branch I worked in; but I’m sure they read these, and those money-hungry pigs would probably sniff around for a lawsuit. But nothing bars me from airing what happened to me directly.
I worked the job for three months and finally got out on the road by myself to “make money” as they said. That was a joke. I tried to give my customers support the best I could. This sometimes meant spending over an hour at people’s houses explaining to them what I was going to do, what they had to do, and some small talk. There’s no sense in acting like a jerk. The result? Well, considering my route was in the middle of nowhere and I was more focused on giving my customers the service they paid good money to get, I couldn’t achieve more than 8 - 10 stops a day. (And that was only if there weren’t any Sentricon stops which took generally less time.) I was met with a scolding by my manager for not completing my routes, because you see it doesn’t matter whether you solve a customer’s problem. All that matters is you leave that ticket in the door that says you were there... and everything is supposed to be all right.
Florida 8/01-E1 (TE7-71). Unfortunately, Sears agreed on August 17 to sell its pest control interests to Terminix. Having worked for Sears (whom I considered to be very good at customer satisfaction) for the past several years, I have been disheartened by not only the prospect of unemployment but also concern for what is to become of “my” customers. All newer termite contracts are going to be automatically converted to a Sentricon baiting station while older termite contracts there is no info about what will happen. I suspect that when these older contracts come due, customers will be told they must purchase the Sentricon baiting service or they will no longer have a contract. I believed in the Sears service so much that I had the service on my own house. Terminix is supposedly going to be contacting me about employment with them after my official termination date with Sears, but I WILL NOT work for such a company. Rather, I’ll go into partnership with other Sears employees and open up a business competing with Terminix to provide customers with true customer service. Should be easy considering Terminix’s track record. Thank you for your web site.
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