Wouldn’t it be great if were in the same building? I doubt it, but it would make things much more interesting hehe.

The management company knows we all have bedbugs, and they did say “this is a bed bug prevention” a couple years ago, but if they knoew how m any units in my buidlign had them, why didnt they do another “preventative” maitnenance!!!
The only difference is when i called and said i had them, they didnt deny it, its almost like they were expecting my call. If only they would have hired a new PCO who knew what they were doing. IT was funny becuase the one they hired were always in our complex on Tuesdays and Thursdays…kinda like THEY knew too that we all were itchy!

(See people, I am not anti-lawsuit!)

I live in Boston, and was in my apartment for 5 years with never a problem. Nothing. A couple years ago the management did notify residents in my building to move everythign from the walls etc and they were coming in to either spray or put glue traps down. Well, i didnt have bedbugs then.

Now it turns otu i found out many people in my building had bedbugs aroudn the same time i did, but no one was notified of anything. They just treated it like they were coming in to paint the walls or something, no one else needs to know, right?

Wrong. I heard that one itme the aparmtent below me had bedbugs, and i have a feeling some students brought them in a couple doors down as well.

Still..i lost $1700 and that is not counting throwing out my good bed, and almost all of my furniture.

Corcoran Mullens Jenison Management does not care. They never have to live with these things and they also have no problem taking your money and life right out from under your nose.

I too agree that doing your own pest control is not wise, for most people, in most cases. For us, it’s been three and a half months, and I think we’re almost ready to make the leap. If our first 3 PCO treatments hadn’t been just in the bedroom, if we didn’t have a wooden ceiling, if we didn’t have a brick wall full of holes, if we didn’t have two cars, and if we had isolated our bed sooner than 6 weeks in, this might have stopped by now, and we never would have felt the need to resort to buying our own stuff.

But then again, if we hadn’t gotten our landlord to pay for extermination, if we didn’t eventually find a PCO who was so thorough and open-minded, if I didn’t have a counselor who helped me and my boyfriend understand my trauma, and if I didn’t have this website and all the people I’ve met through it, we might have taken matters into our own hands sooner.

(Editor’s note, but without watching the PCO, or having contact with people like Jess that you could ask about pesticides, you would have been even less qualified to go it alone, and more likely to either hurt yourself or make your bed bug problems worse.)

So, thanks to everyone. I hope to declare success sometime soon, though right now, it’s just too soon to tell.

I firmly believe most people — who do not have S’s background — should not use pesticides. (If you read my comment above correctly, you’d see I was granting an exception in S’s case.) Even experienced users, who did it out of necessity and really did their research, like Jess, have told us they hurt themselves using pesticides.

I do not include DE in this (though obviously there are still cautions to be taken). I think it is safe for people who’ve never had bed bugs or have no evidence of an infestation to use freshwater DE (with care).

I would not want people to rush to self-treat thinking that PCOs can’t find evidence if the person can’t, since PCOs should have an easier time finding evidence than new sufferers can. Evidence does not mean bugs. Even if your PCO didn’t find such evidence, they’ve learned a lot since then.

If it seems like I’m a bit pushy about these views, it’s because I wouldn’t want people to harm themselves or make their infestations worse and then say, “Well, I read on Bedbugger that this is what I should do.”