Western Exterminator

I hired Western Exterminator for rat removal. When I called, I was promised they would do a perimeter check, go under the house, set multiple traps, and if the rats didn’t take the bait, change it. I discovered later that the people on the phone were salesmen in a boiler room—they knew nothing of what the technician or company would do and would promise anything.

The technician came out and did the perimeter check, but only checked inside the house because I insisted. He found one entry point to the crawl space and set two traps under the house, and at my urging, set some in the house where I had set traps previously. I paid $300 for a month’s worth of service, which is really only three weeks (four visits one week apart) and an additional $150 for a contractor to patch the hole. The contractor did not come for 11 days, so my house was still open to rats. I was not offered an extension on the service. Only one rat was caught.

The tech was rude, dismissive, and all but accused me of lying. When I showed him places I had caught rats, he kept questioning me and looking like he didn’t believe me. When I told him I heard rats, he said that since the crawl space was sealed, they couldn’t get in. He insisted that the house was now rat free and refused to change the bait.

I called to talk to his supervisor three or four times and was on hold for unreasonable lengths of time. After getting nowhere with either man, I finally told the supervisor that the tech had to change the bait. The tech called and argued with me, but I told him he was going to come out, period. He didn’t believe there were still rats until I played a recording of one under the bathtub. Within a few hours after changing the bait, a second rat was caught.

Meanwhile, I was trying to get through to someone higher up but couldn’t get past the boiler room, so I emailed a couple times through the website. No one responded, so I posted on their Facebook page. That’s what it took to get his email. I emailed twice, a week apart, and he didn’t reply, so I posted on Facebook again. I very quickly got a phone call, and he apologized and said my emails had gone to his spam folder. I insisted that my money be refunded and said if it wasn’t, I would dispute the charge on my credit card.

A couple months later, I needed to get rid of the rat fleas under the house, so I called a different company. I just expected him to spray, but he checked around the perimeter of the house. He found another entry point that Western had completely missed, which was why I still had rats. He sealed it as part of his inspection fee.

If Western responds to this review, they will undoubtedly say “We did everything we could to please her” and “We refunded her money.” They refunded my money because they didn’t do the job I paid them for, and all it would have taken to please me was to do that job.