Letter to PCOs

I've written a letter and faxed it to 10 pest control businesses in Perth.

Dear Pest Controller

I have selected you along with others from the yellow pages to ask a few questions, as I am taking my landlord to court for their poor handling of a bed bug infestation in my apartment. My complaint is not about the pest controller themselves – I have the highest level of respect for your industry and understand how intense competition can lead to cut-price services. Also, I consider myself well educated about the bed bug issue and don’t need advice in that regard.

What I am trying to determine is what level of service you recommend as a default to new clients, what you are willing to cut to reduce your price and most importantly what warnings you may give when doing so. So if your business treats bed bugs and you have a few moments to answer these questions and fax them back to me I would really appreciate it. Please be aware that I may reproduce your response in court/print/tv/radio/online/in parliament and elsewhere. I may also follow up with you at a later stage if I need clarification.

1. For a single apartment (2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 1 kitchen, 1 living room, 2 balconies; all with thin carpeting except the kitchen which is linoleum), where a dozen bed bugs have been sighted in at least one bedroom and the occupant is reacting strongly with multiple bites, what level of treatment do you first recommend? Include:
Pre-treatment
Do you provide a printed list of instructions for the client to follow in preparation?
Do you inspect inside the apartment to locate bed bug colonies?
Do you use animals or bed bug locating dogs?
Do you ask to see adjacent apartments?
Do you seal any cracks?
Treatment
How quickly could you schedule a treatment?
Do you fumigate or use any bombs or gasses (vikane, etc)?
Do you steam?
Do you spray?
Do you use dusts?
Post-treatment
Do you clean up dead bugs afterwards?
Do you leave anything for post-treatment?
Do you leave a business or contact card for the occupant?
How many treatments are included in your first quote?
2. Please indicate if a client can opt in or out of any of those services. Do you warn either way that any of these treatments above are or are not necessary?
3. Please feel free to make any other comments if you feel something hasn’t been covered above.

I think the results will be really interesting. They might help me in the court case if I can argue that the landlord likely chose the "cheapest route" to deal with the bugs against general advice they would have received from pest controllers - which I assume is what happened.

What's even more interesting is that one of those I faxed is also the company that did my apartment yesterday. I can't wait to see what their response is.

Also I can pass what I get along some of the pest control organisations, health department, and parliament, in an effort to get an education campaign to raise the level of awareness in bed bugs and how to select a PCO that will treat them correctly.

I'll post here if any of the companies replies to me. I think some won't want to.