January 30, 2023
Several weeks ago I found some dead winged insects in my third floor bathroom. There were 30-40 of them dead or dying. They looked like red & black ants. I have a contract with Terminix and had just sent them a check for a renewal for our termite coverage. I called Terminix for an appointment to make sure what they were and how to exterminate them. The employee came over and stated that they were ants and not termites. He took some in a plastic bag and said that he would identify them and find a way to get rid of them. Several weeks later I called to remind Terminix about our problems and the lady told me that they had no record of the visit nor any research to get rid of them. She sent another employee to investigate but this time it cost me $190-odd dollars for the visit. The next employee gathered some more dead bugs & put them in special container. Another week went by and I called them because there was a large swarm of these insects in the bathroom that I killed with bug spray. The lady I talked to, Linda, gave me the name and telephone number of the other employee and promised to get him to call me. When he called me he told me that the bugs were “Fire Ants” and could not do anything because we had ferns growing in our stuccoed walls and could not get to the Ants. I asked if they had ladders like the ones they used when they tented our house to kill the termites to get rid of the ants. He rambled on for a while and finally hung up. Then I went to the computer and searched for red & black winged ants and within seconds I discovered that our bugs were ordinary red and black Carpenter ants who were swarming in the early Spring and their nests needed to be sprayed with Ortho, a indoor insect barrier easily found in every hardware store. Then I received a call from the supervisor of the employees who told me that the ants were indeed Fire ants and our masonry walls were too fragile to do anything about it. I told him that I Googled the red & black ants and that they were ordinary Carpenter ants. After that he got nasty maintaining that he knew more than I and hung up on me. Then I Googled complaints about Terminix and discovered that the company was purchased by a corporation in England and was deluged with complaints about frauds about money and bad incompetent work. On-line I found a way to cancel our contract and even a Law Firm that specialized in suing Terminix for their fraud and incompetence. Please warn everyone you can to not use this corporation and find a better & more honest Company