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My (disappointing) experience with Pestaway, crappy landlord
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DistressInBrooklyn
junior member
Joined: Aug '09
Posts: 35offline
Posted 3 years ago
Thu Aug 6 2009 15:05:38
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Hello. Just want to say first that this forum and the site have been so helpful. My husband and I are close to crazy, and it helps to know we're not alone.
Story: We live in a 20-unit building in Williamsburg. We were hanging out on the couch in the living room on Saturday and he saw a bed bug crawling towards me. We trapped it and saved it, and of course panicked. Couldn't find any signs of blood or bites, but called M&M Environmental to have a canine inspection with Champ. Champ found bedbugs on one piece of luggage, our bed, and one piece of furniture in our living room.We couldn't get ahold of our landlord or super over the weekend, so we started researching PCO's and got the pre-treatment prep list from several of them, which were pretty similar. Did the whole bagging thing, emptied out our closets, rolled up and tarped and sealed our area rugs, etc. On Monday and Tuesday, after a looooooooooong fight with our always-use-a-bandaid-never-find-a-real-solution landlord, we arranged to have a treatment with Pestaway, their PCO, instead of one of the other companies we wanted, (which was Absolute Death, which would have treated our mattress, paintings, and injected chemicals into the walls). Our neighbor, who is 8 months pregnant and has a cat, also wanted to have a preventative spray just to make sure she wouldn't have to deal with this when her baby came.
Anyways, our Pestaway technician came three hours early on Wednesday and we were unprepared, so he came back. When he came back, he went into our neighbor's apartment and sprayed first, but told her she could stay in the apartment and the cat was fine too. She left immediately anyways, thankfully. He then came to our apartment, and didn't bother to inspect anything, just asked us where we wanted him to spray. He was using Suspend. We told him where the dog had found the bedbugs, and he started spraying (we asked if he could spray the underside of our platform bed, which we had pulled apart for him, and his response was "sure, if you want." Didn't inspect at all). We were worried and asked if we should leave, and he says no, it's fine. But our instruction sheet specifically says that we need to be out for 8 hours, so we call Pestaway's office and they tell us to get out. Next thing we know, the tech's cell phone is ringing, and then he comes out of the room and says, "Oh, turns out it's bad, you should leave."
Who does that??!?!?!?!? Then he says he doesn't think he'll be back for a treatment, he just goes where the office tells him. We asked him if there was any follow up we should do, and he said, "I think we're fine."
Then later, we hear from our neighbor that our building super called her and yelled at her for getting sprayed and costing him money. He also tells her that "the technician came and said your neighbors are crazy, they don't have bed bugs."
WTF. Nobody did any inspection or asked for any proof, which we could have shown. The whole process has been very ugly, turned into a battle about money, and our landlord refuses to tell the other neighbors or pay to help seal up the apartment so that it doesn't spread through the building. We plan to post a letter by the mailboxes so the other tenants know. Don't know what else to do, and I don't want to use Pestaway for our second treatment, even if we have to pay for it. Is it okay to switch PCOs, after our first treatment, since we can tell them exactly what the technician did the first time? The business about not being knowledgeable about Suspend and not caring to do an inspection really, really, really soured me to the experience.
Sorry for the long rant -- I am just so overwhelmed and tense and angry, and I am amazed at how traumatizing this experience has been, and IT'S ONLY BEEN A WEEK. Trying not to be a baby about it, but it's really hard to not ever want to go home to my black garbage bag-filled apartment
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momto2boys
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Joined: Jun '09
Posts: 29offline
Posted 3 years ago
Thu Aug 6 2009 15:12:06
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I'm so sorry. That is super sucky. I hope things get solved soon and you can put everything back together
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spideyjg
oldtimer
Joined: Jul '08
Posts: 3,201offline
Posted 3 years ago
Thu Aug 6 2009 15:26:08
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Totally unprofessional behavior by this clown.
Sad to say I have no faith that his "treatment" is going to do squat.
Jim
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crazylittledaisy
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Joined: Aug '09
Posts: 6offline
Posted 3 years ago
Thu Aug 6 2009 15:43:08
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I'm sorry for your terrible experience. Maybe it's best to switch PCOs as long as the new ones seem knowledgeable about the change of chemicals. The guys that came to do mine (Metropest) also told me I should stay in the apt during the spraying. They didn't want to have to "wait for me" after they were done with the treatment. I have no idea which chemicals they used but they didn't seem worried about it. I then ran into inspectors from the same company checking other apartments and they told me that I definitely shouldn't have been in the apt during the treatment. (yikes! i hope there wasn't any damage done to my system somewhere)
In addition, they moved my bags around, not very carefully, causing one of them to open, and some to tear, I ran around with tape trying to tape them, and they were like, "eh, it's fine. don't worry about it.." so now i'm confused... why were they so careless about it....and how am i going to reclean everything without reinfesting my apt? (I'm three treatments in) Ugh!
Good luck to you moving forward...
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DistressInBrooklyn
junior member
Joined: Aug '09
Posts: 35offline
Posted 3 years ago
Thu Aug 6 2009 17:01:30
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Thank you all for the kind words, momto2boys and spideyjg. I can't believe how careless some of the people are that we trust (have to trust) our homes to, and how they don't seem to be sensitive at all to the fact that we're pretty traumatized.
I am going to speak to some other PCOs, and continue arguing with my landlord. Hopefully another PCO will agree to do the apartment even though it's been treated once by someone else. I have no idea what the protocol is.
crazylittledaisy -- having just sealed/tarped/resealed/ziptied my apartment to death, I can imagine the stress that having somebody treat the bags lazily does to you. I am new to this, but maybe you should double-bag them to be safe while you think best about how to retreat them. Are you using a Packtite? We just ordered one and I can't wait to get all of our non-washable stuff in there.
We also just got some ziploc XLs (couldn't find in stores, so had to order on drugstore.com), so I am hoping that it helps our mental state a bit being able to at least see some of our clothes.
We haven't bagged our dining room, or the entirety of our living room closet, as the BBs seem to be concentrated in the bedroom and the far side of the living room, per the canine inspection. I'm not certain we need to do it all, but may just for peace of mind.
As an aside, I forgot to mention that the canine inspection that we got from M&M was great. Won't mention the name of handler, but Champ seemed very thorough, and the handler was happy to answer all questions and remind us that we can't do it all at once, just to do things bit by bit and as we can. He had also had six appointments that day -- an indication, I think, of how bad the problem is in the city.
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