Pennsylvania - 5/00. I have recently canceled both my pest control and termite contracts after 15 years for nothing more serious than irritation with the booking reliability of their service. I am due a part year refund which hasn’t yet arrived after 2 months - I'm still hoping!

New Jersey - 5/00. We have a 22-year Terminix contract with annual inspections, We put the house up for sale and called Terminix three weeks ago, who gave their usual “no termites” and told me that it can be used for the sale of the house.  Today, the buyer’s own inspector came and found two sections of the basement with active mud tunnels clearly visible to the inspector. Looks like the house sale is dead, because they left today with close to tears in their eyes. We just hope we can force Terminix to retreat the house.

Update (6/00): Our major complaint is their haste and, in our opinion, superficial quick once over. Also, always trying to sell some bug zap for spiders, ants, or whatever. We have a detached garage with a 7 ft. cement block wall and a wood roof.  The [buyers’ inspecting company] guy finds a partial, very thin, tunnel going 3 ft. up the cement wall and stopping.  No evidence of termites.  He says, “You must have the garage treated because I found a tunnel.” We argue with him that the termites quit and never got to the roof. No matter, says he.  We had some very old sill damage in the basement.  [He] tells the buyers that it is VERY (1000’s) expensive to fix and that he found a tunnel (inactive tunnel on the STEEL support beam) and therefore we MUST treat the house for termites.  He also tells the buyers that his company can have the damage repaired. We subsequently spent $800 to repair/replace all the damaged wood... including some spots that Terminix and [he] missed.

The buyers backed out. Later they changed their minds.  After [he] left, we called Terminix again; and another inspector came and spent about one hour checking very thoroughly.  No active termites found. Called Terminix again to send a person licensed to do inspections for sale, and we passed with no problem. Buyers are now happy.  No, we are not recommending Terminix; but now we wonder “who can you trust?”

North Carolina - 5/00. Contacted Terminix when I found a swarm of termites in the sunroom area of my home.  Terminix treated the area and said everything was “fine.” In 1998, noticed small cracks in floor tiles in sunroom where swarms found on wall. October 1999, hired workman to replace glass door in sunroom damaged by Hurricane Floyd.  He discovered extensive termite damage.  Terminix employee after many calls arrives and tells me we don’t have termites. Terminix spot-treated the area once in October and twice in November 1999.  Terminix employee damages patio with several large cracks as he treats my home.  We complain.  Terminix employee, Steve Knight, verbally agrees to repair termite damage and cracked patio.  One month later in a phone conversation, Steve Knight says he never said Terminix would repair any damage to my home. He stated the structure caused moisture damage. I requested he fax me his findings; he did.  In April 2000, we had Orkin inspect for termites. They had no high moisture readings for our home. They did find large areas of home that have never been treated. We’re now under contract with Orkin, costing me thousands on top of the thousands paid Terminix for inadequate annual inspections, termite treatment, and failure to repair home as required by the contract. For the record, I have pictures; a tape of active termites feeding, filmed after Terminix told us we didn’t have termites; a damaged (cracked) patio; and a letter that declares such high moisture readings that my house is underwater and a water-logged structure.

Tennessee - 5/00. I am having trouble with Terminix also.  I have been fighting with them now for 11 years.  I have even been on TV about it; and they came out and re-treated my house, which they had said previously could not be done according to state laws. But the bottom line is, I STILL HAVE TERMITES; and they will not do anything about it except charge next year’s premium and tell my why I need the good protection.  They will call and set up a yearly appointment, sometimes in November or December, and then not show up at the scheduled date. When I call to ask why, I get some of the most stupid excuses ever uttered from a human mouth. I am well known in this part of the country by Terminix; and when I do call to complain, I am put on hold for long periods of time.  When someone does talk to me, it is all they can do to keep from laughing.  In the past when an inspector came to my house, I would show them the latest damage; and being a new Terminix employee, he would go back and report the damage to his supervisor.  Needless to say, for some strange reason, he was fired from or left the company soon thereafter. So as of right now, I have termites and still cannot get this lousy company to do anything about it.  I guess my next bet is to consult a lawyer and go from there.

New Hampshire - 5/00. Like a fool, I signed a one-year contract (Jan - Dec 99) for my vacation home in New Hampshire after we saw evidence of termites. In October of that year, we sold the house. We e-mailed and called Terminix in September to notify them to cancel the contract and ask if we could be reimbursed for the last quarter of service we would not be using. We got no response.  In fact, every month from October 1999 to April 2000, I received a bill for continued service and solicitations to renew my annual contract. Every month, we called and repeated the fact that we sold the house in October 1999 and canceled the service, please update your records. All we got were pointed fingers of incompetence and assurances that the service was canceled and the bills would stop.  The Salem NH office and Branch Manager Eric Marino and his staff blamed the “national office.” The bills kept coming, despite repeated assurances that the problem was solved.

Now the final straw and ultimate customer harassment -- I received a letter from a credit collection agency for my past due Terminix bill of $126!  Once again, I spoke with Eric Marino, “Your Terminix Branch Manager,” who has assured me he will take care of everything and not destroy my credit rating. Time will tell.  In the meantime, I plan to tell everyone who will listen not to hire these incompetent pest controllers.  Terminix is the pest you can never be rid of.

Ohio - 4/00. Back in 1990, my mother was in her late 70’s and a widow living by herself.  A pest control company named Torco sold her a bill of goods to protect the house from termites. It was given the all clear. In 1991, Terminix bought Torco out, so now she is dealing with Terminix since then.  At that time, my job was in Georgia.  In 1994, my wife and I moved home to take care of my mother until her death in 1999.  I got the Terminix contract transferred into my name in 1997. The whole time my mom had the contract with Terminix, 1990 through 1997, we have inspection reports for every year -- no termites found. I started looking around and I found all kinds of termites and activity. My wife and I put all we had in this house hoping to get it out when I retire in about five more years. I can’t believe that this can happen in America. I’ve worked hard all my life like most people have, served my country in the Marines, went to Viet Nam, came home, and went on with my life. When I go to sell this home and people find out about the termites, they will run; and I don’t blame them.

Connecticut - 4/00. I have been having an ongoing argument with Terminix to obtain a refund for over two years now.  I signed a monthly contract for services for pest control for my brand new house to do the “inside and outside.”  The people there decided to keep changing the spraying day so that when they came over, I wasn’t there. They left a paper stating that the outside only was done (I still have these two), but it wasn’t fair that they didn’t do the inside that I was paying for too.  I was promised a refund for a long time already, and I told them what they had done was illegal, to no avail.

California - 4/00. We are at the beginning of this nightmare. We closed escrow on a house April 17.  We were going to remodel the kitchen before we moved in and found horrible termite damage.  Now we have had to rip all of the walls down and have found so much damage that we might as well have knocked the house down and started fresh.  The floor supporting the bathtub is so rotted that it is about to fall through.  Terminix is coming out to fix that problem, but we have much bigger financial problems because of what they failed to find.  Also, Terminix told us that their guy “f.... up” and did not know what he was doing.  Had they identified this problem, they would have had an obligation to make the sellers open the walls and fix this mess or to have told us of the problem and we would have paid less for the house. We have had to pay people to rip out all of the drywall. We have hired a framer to fix the house and now have to re-drywall the entire house, including ceilings.  My husband is missing work, and we are paying two mortgages ($3,000 and $2,000).  We can’t move in until this is all fixed because we have a ten-month old.

California - 4/00. I, too, have become one of the long list of unfortunate victims of the dishonest claims of the pest control company known as Terminix.  In April of 1993, a swarm of these useless critters appeared in the living room of our single-family house. A representative of Terminix appeared shortly after I made the initial phone call, contract in hand.  He gave me the impression that all our troubles were over when, in fact, they were just beginning. An appointment was made for treatment and the Terminix representative showed up two hours late, sprayed a chemical around the base of one wall, and left.  It wasn’t long before the termites showed who was boss, and I called Terminix again. This time, it was much more difficult to get them to send someone to re-treat the premises.  I had to wait three weeks before they could find time to arrive to assess the infestation.

I was on a first-name relationship to the secretaries at the Terminix office in Sacramento since I was distinctly unhappy and calling often for retreatment.  It became increasingly difficult to get a retreatment appointment; and the treatment, when it DID happen, took less and less time. The termites were still doing their handiwork with more damage evident.  Terminix was playing me like a fine-tuned violin. I had hopes that eventually they would find the entrance point for the critters and eliminate them.  But no such luck! My son, the occupant of the termite palace, started rummaging around under the house looking for their entrance point, and magically, there it was within plain sight; but nobody had bothered to check that area before.  This discovery brought a phone call from the office manager after the report reached the Sacramento office; and the next day, he arrived to triumph that “now we’re getting somewhere.”

Before he left, I finally brought up the subject of repairs to the damage that I had steadily put up with since the original contract was signed in March 1993, and I had faithfully paid the insurance policy each year.  He stated that he would have their contractor get in touch with me by January 15, 2000.  The date came and went and I finally got in touch with the office manager.  He said he was going to be in my area the next day and wanted to see me.  Next day, he arrived 2 1/2 hours late and waving a sheet of paper. I intended to bring up the matter of repairs under the Terminix guarantee for repairs while under contract.  The paper was a new contract that stated repairs were not included under this contract since it covers only retreatment. This is a physically impossible situation since the property has not been termite free since the inception of the contract.  I found a web page for termites and was surprised to find about 100 pages of information on them.  One of the most interesting facts is that the life of a termite is two years. The queen can live for 30 years but doesn’t eat the wood, just makes more kids.  Since the original treatment happened in March 1993, it stands to reason that much of the damage had to take place after that date given the life span of the troublemakers. The office manager said he felt that I had a legitimate claim, but he was delivering a message from a higher authority and couldn’t do anything about it.  We have reached an impasse; and due to the size of the corporation, I know what my chances are. I am in a position of being unable to sell the property due to the callous disregard of the matter by this outfit. Maybe it won’t matter that much; because the termites are still working, and the 2 x 12 beams won’t support the weight of the house forever. After dealing with Terminix, it’s difficult to keep you emotions under wraps, knowing you enter the fray with two strikes against you and without a bat.  Like most average people, we don’t have a great deal of money to donate to lawyers, but I just hate to see companies like this prosper at the expense of honest, average people.