May's denied any responsibility for this damage, so the cost came entirely out of our pockets even after paying yearly for termite inspections and quarterly for pest control. Their first response was, "We are not structural engineers." Neither was our contractor, but he spotted the problems in about 10 minutes. Then May's dragged out a contract from 1971 (we bought the house in 1996) and claimed that was the only contract they needed to honor. Our signatures were not on it, of course, and there was no address on the contract at all. That "contract" did not specify anything but the increase in cost for the service over the years. We are currently trying to locate the contract from 1996, but after moving 3000 miles away, we are not sure we can find it. In our opinion, May's has not acted responsibly toward good customers who believed in them for 19 years. At the least, they could have offered to reimburse us for the lumber needed to repair the foundation.
Description of Work
We bought our house in 1996. It was built in 1971 and had been under a termite contract with May's since that time. We continued with them because of this. In 2008, after our annual termite inspection, we were told that there was evidence of "old termite damage" in our crawl space. We immediately asked about this and were told that it was not a serious problem, that there was no evidence of active termites, and that it was nothing to worry about. Our service record proves that we ALWAYS acted on any recommendation made by May's, including replacing the vapor barrier, sump pump, and installing temperature sensitive vents. When we sold the house this year, the inspection showed serious termite damage to several floor joists, which we had to repair before the sale.
May Exterminating Company has inspected (member name removed)'s house since 1971. The contract transferred from the previous owner to (member name removed). In 1996, the only type of contract we had was a retreatment only contract. I have asked (member name removed) for a copy of his signed contract which he cannot find so I can only go by the unsigned contract from the previous owner that automatically transferred to (member name removed) upon purchasing the house. (Member name removed) has been notified since 2008 that he had old evidence of termites. Our records have been purged so 2008 is the farthest we go back for inspections so (member name removed) may have been notified of old evidence of termites before that date. Unfortunately, (member name removed) was under retreatment only contract and May Exterminating Company is not responsible for the damages. (Member name removed) has stated that he new about the termites but did not address the problem. Also, he has waited at least seven years (maybe more) before asking for monetary reimbursement. Finally and most importantly, I sent him the only copy of a contract on file and he claims that he has a signed contract, which he cannot find.