Reg Green | Controlling the Pest Controller

I opened the front door to a young man who told me he and his team were getting rid of bugs from next door and that I might notice brown spiders that they had dislodged clinging to our eaves.

By Reg Green

However, I shouldn’t worry because his company would fix everything at no cost to us. I told him I had no objection to them going ahead.

Oh, by the way he asked, had I noticed any increase in bugs or ants as several of our other neighbors were finding? Any rodents? He seemed surprised when I said no. Well, he wondered aloud, why take the risk of the same thing happening to us?  While they were working on the house next door they could do a first-class job on ours at a special discount price.

I said no again but looking at his hand-held computer he found, magically, that they could do it for an even lower price than he first thought. As I kept saying no, lower and lower numbers came tumbling out. I told him to come back later, to give myself time to talk to the neighbor.

When I did, as I’d expected, she’d never heard of him. When he came back I told him I knew he’d lied and that if I found a single brown spider on our property I’d sue him for negligence and closed the door. A few minutes later there was a knock and there he was again, looking the picture of innocence, and explaining that everything was legitimate, that he was simply trying to make a living and just wanted to “feed the kids.” I told him to scram and alerted the neighborhood through the useful network we’ve set up. Everyone who responded had had a similar experience. “He never stopped talking even while I closed the door on him,” one of them said.

I don’t know if this man works for a company that claims to be reputable but I do know that, instead of putting fear into people around here, many of them elderly, and taking their money for a non-existent problem, the best form of pest control it could practice would be to rein in its sales force.