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I wanted to post this complaint hoping I will reach out to any future neighborhoods that will be effected by this company. Home Shield Pest Control has figured out a way to build a customer base by using old school methods. (door to door). There is nothing wrong with that as long as you are being honest and selling an honest product. That is where the problem starts with Home Shield. The sales reps are not trained on making sales what they are trained on are tactics to CLOSE the sale. What that basically means is they do whatever they can to get you to sign a contract. Once you sign the contract you have 3 days to cxl it or you get locked into a 5 or 7 service contract. Here is what they dont tell you about the contract. If you want to cxl you will need to pay a 73% cancel fee. They say this is to cover the cost of materials and commisions to the rep. They also dont tell you that if your not home they will just service the exterior of the home. What they do tell a customer that calls in because they are not happy is its all on the contract you signed. The sales reps do a good job of distracting you from reading the full terms. They dont care about your home or family at all. What they care about is getting the sale so they can make a commision. I have worked for these compnaies and have experienced this first hand. I want to share a story about a customer of Home Shield. I got a call one day from an olde women (senior citizen) she called to say she did not want anymore services because she was on a fixed income and was told by the rep she could cxl at any time by just calling the office. My job was to inform her she had a contract and would have to pay termination fees. She then said what contract? I said the one you signed, she then told me she explained to the rep her eyesight was bad and she could not see what she was signing. The rep then assured her was nothing she had to worry about and could cxl at any time. The poor women signed and her signature was so hard to read because she couldny see the lines to sign on. This rep took full advantage of this women.
I cxl her account with no fees due to the lack of honesty from the rep. Its things like this that happen every day and I was having a hard time dealing with this. This is the reason I left the company. I also want to point out that it doesnt matter if you have a no solicit sign on your door they will ignore it.
I also want to point out they will tell you that all their products are safe and organic. I will tell you this is also un true. There is one bottle of botanicals in the storage box and it just sits there. The materials they use are not organic at all. They can have an effect on the people living in the home if they are not applied properly.
My advice would be to not use this company and their dis honest buisness practices. If you are approached by them make sure they explain all the details of the contract in full. Do not sign the contract until you read it fully and dont let them pressure you into signing the contract. And if they tell you all your neighbors use their service, go ask your neighbor with the rep and you will see he is lying. Buyer beware.
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
This company uses slick door to door salespeople who will use whatever and say whatever to get you to sign the contract. I have never tried using pest control before but I figured it might be worth it to time trial their services so I agreed since the rep said all we had to do was take the service up to September (this was in January) and after that we could cancel at any time. This was for outdoor only as I do not know what they use and certainly did not want it sprayed inside the house with kids and pets around. The spraying was conducted in January, again in June, and then in September. There was a reduction in spider webs but bugs still made their way into our patio furniture and other places in our back yard. I decided that I did not want to continue the service and called to cancel. The lady who took the call simply said thank you and left it at that. The next thing I know I am receiving an early cancellation notice with a fee of $100. I called them and they informed me that this was a 2 year service. I told them that wasn't what their rep told me but they told me to look at my contract. The contract showed 3 spray periods ending in September but what the rep didn't tell me was that it was for September the following year. Had he not omitted this important fact I would have opted to not sign it. The rep was clear in what he told me (bold face liar that he was) but it was my fault for buying into it. A careless mistake on my part but that doesn't excuse this company or its tactics of using shady sales reps keen on only getting that commission and nothing else. I have since had them come back and boldly knock on my door. You can bet I was quick to tell him to get off my property. I will never use their services again and I recommend to everyone who reads this to READ THE CONTRACT. Do not listen to the slick sales turd at your door. Ask to see it in writing what the terms are and do not sign anything until you are completely aware of and agree to the terms. It's pretty basic stuff and I do not usually succumb to door to door sales of any kind but I wanted to give them a shot. My mistake!
L. Hudson
They "auto-renewed" my contract after the 1yr that I signed up for and paid in advance. When I told them that I don't want to renew my contract, they sent me a bill for one month as I didn't inform them on time? What kind of nonsense is that.
The company did not go bankrupt. They sold to another pest control company and reopened in Geneva, IL under the name ecoshield. Still a terrible, terrible company! Do
not uSe!
I just reported Home Shield Pest Control to the Better Business Bureau of Utah. Awful, awful, awful! Their treatment was ineffective and my dog became violently ill. They are trying to get $250 out of me for breaking my contract! I will be seeing them in small claims court.
I have had Home shield for over a year now and they have done a great job on my home in north denver. The previous company couldn't get rid of my mice or spiders. The home shield manager john came right out to my house to assess the mice and was able to get it taken care of in 2 services.
Yes the svc is for a year and reoccurring every couple months, but you cant just treat a house once and expect the world to be perfect. I have referred my boss, stepson and neighbor to homeshield and they have all enjoyed the service.
-steven castle
Homeshield Pest Control is dishonest. We told them that they needed to call ahead to make sure someone is home before coming out, because the inside of the house also needed to be treated (which I am paying for). But they always manage to show up when noone is home and treat only the outside and charge me for the full service. We called them numerous times and told them not to do that because we have dogs and we wanted the inside treated. But they kept coming out and charging us. We disputed the last 2 bills and cancelled the service. The management treated us like we are wrong and they didn't care about our needs. All they wanted is there money! I will not recommend them to anyone! This Homeshield Pest control is in Fairfax, VA and they were bought out by Terminix. I hope Terminix is not going to be as dishonest. By the way, we are still arguing with them... You would think that the customer is right and that they would work something out with you!
What ever happened to good service! I rate Homeshield Pest Control from the scale of 1-10, 10 being excellent, a ONE!
I am currently disputing a charge that was billed to my credit card for 109.00. My first experience of their service was that they had done a poor job of spraying around the house. I personally was inspecting their work and they missed areas of the house where they were supposed to have sprayed. The bug problem was not resolved. I asked them to come out to do a more thorough job but when a rep came to my door I asked him upfront before spraying again whether or not there would be an additional cost involved he said that it would cost me another $109.00. After hearing this I decided to cancel any future service from them and told this to the representative that came out to my home "face to face". I thought that was the end of it. However, I noticed a bill that showed up on my credit card for $109.00 from Home Shield Pest Control. When I contacted the company to resolve the matter they told me that they had paid my house a visit to spray again for a second time. They came out when we were out of town so we had no way of stopping them from spraying. When I told them we had already cancelled with one of their reps at the door their response was that this was not sufficient as there is a standard procedure to cancel. If that were true then the rep that we spoke to at our home should have notified us of this but since he did not say anything to us we assumed a verbal cancellation with him was sufficient. My credit card company reversed the charge for me but I currently received a collection letter demanding payment for the $109.00. I am now currently looking at options of how to continue my dispute most likely with small claims because even though $109.00 is not a huge amount of money it is the principle that matters and I see no honesty or integrity afforded to the customer by this company based on my personal experience and many others. This company is in no way a service oriented company where the customer comes first. A solution to this is still pending...
Im sure at some point someone from Homeshield will come on here to say you were a bad employee and make excuses. The company had to file bankruptcy and hopefully will be out of buisness all together. The owners have no idea what it means to render a true pest control service. They have no technical knowledge of the industry, they are only in buisness to make money. Nothing wrong with making money at all. The thing is they are not honest people and it has caught up to them. If they could make money selling dirt they would be knocking on doors selling it. I have been in the industry for a long time and I have never seen such a poorly ran company like Homeshield. They are clueless and wreckless and truly dont care about their employees or customers. Your better off without them.
For all of you still reading this, I totally agree about the practices of this company. I worked as a technician for them for 9 months. The extent of my training was following around one of the other technicians for a few days. For those wondering, chemicals used consisted of:
Bifenthrin (spelling?) Not overly toxic, can be to fish.
Termidor - very harmful to environment when used in excess (only legally allowed to be sprayed once per year or so), we were told to use it each service (once every 2 months) on the exterior of the homes
and some sort of granular for lawn (can be bought @ home depot), and ant gel bait (again, go to home depot)
Watching the sales people, none of them were trained for the service or knew much about it at all. All you customers probably first complained to us, the technicians, who got the blunt end of the stick. We were the ones who had face to face contact with customers on a bimonthly basis (i got to know quite a few of my customers, several of them were satisfied, most not). Contractual questions were the #1 quesitons i got, terribly annoying because it was me cleaning up sales people and office people's messes. Other than that, it seems the claims of "sales people trapping spiders and showing them", totally true, i had one of the OWNERS of the company on a sales run with a few guys, brought me with them to do some same-day services, pulled out a black widow, only thing is, he's from Utah, we were in Maryland, Black widows are common in the state, but not where we were, i know my state (and the bugs that i serviced, heh).
Our [censor] service (the normal, exterior one done whether you're home or not) consisted of: Termidor around the base of the house (again, exceeding legal limits), Granular pesticide in the lawn, and removing spider webs and wasps nests...thats it...nothing special. If you got the inside done too, you got spray on the baseboards that was mildly ineffective.
Anyhow, in the end, I busted my [censor] working 14 hour days 6 days a week for 9 months only to be laid off with no severence and no ability to collect unemployment, because they "didnt want to pay $25/mo more for auto insurance for me". Mind you i worked directly with the owners of the company, impressing them with my willingness to do more work, going down to Fairfax VA to help when they were short handed. Oh and did i mention that the office folk didnt know how to schedule routes? consistantly short-handing services to make future appointments. Having to drive back and forth from Waldorf to Upper Marlboro within an hour (and do services), in an area thats an hour and a half away from the office/my home, terrible company, i'm glad to see they're going
You know how they say what goes around comes around, well Home Shield had to file for bankruptcy. Im sure they will blame it on bad employees and managment. But the truth is when your dishonest it will catch up with you. Great job Home Shield.
Disgruntleed Pest Control Customer
This is exactly what this company is known for, they are dishonest and dont care anything about their customers. Its all about the money, money, money. The good news is this is really starting to catch up with them and more and more consumers are realizing how dishonest they are. The more people that post here the better. Word needs to get out there to stay away from this company. I hope you do follow through on contacting everyone you can to let them know to stay away. Best of luck to you and I hope it all works out in the end.
I completely agree with the complaints here. They came to my house and indicated I could get a free service if I was switching over from Orkin. They did NOT do a full service and only did the outside of my house. They said they would not be out again for another 5 to 6 months because they are so much better than Orkin, they don't have to do the service as frequently. Guess I fell for it. When they came to my house only a few weeks later indicating they were going to charge me $99 for the service that day I told them that is NOT what I was told. Being sick and tired of companies like this one, taking people for a ride in order to just make some money, I called to say I would not be switching the service. They say too bad - they will cancel but I have to pay them $99.00. Sorry not paying a dime. This is a HOMESHIELD PEST CONTROL is a DISHONEST company that does NOT PROVIDE the level of service they promise. HOMESHIELD PEST CONTROL uses DECIEPTFUL TACTICS to get people to switch to their service. I will be writing a letter to everyone in the neighborhood, the association on our neighborhood so they post something in the association paper, the BBB, the District Attorney, and Consumer Protection Bureau. I warned them I would do this and they didn't listen. Guess they picked the wrong person to mess with.
HEED WARNING - DO NOT FALL PREY TO THIS COMPANY.
Its sad that this company gets away with this type of service. Whats even more sad is you are just one of hundreds of customers that are probably having the same issue. Homeshield does not put the customer first, unless they can make more money off of you. They will make every excuse possible to not give you a refund. The only thing you can do is keep calling, or hire a honest proffesional company that will do the right thing for the customer. I suggest you file a complaint with the BBB in your area. My advice is stay away from any pest control company that goes door to door to sell you a service. Good luck.
I also agree. This company totally misrepresented themselves and their services. They had a money back guarantee. I was not satisfied, they did not get rid of the spiders or mice at our house. When we called for them to do a free service call in between visits, they were too booked. So we basically threw away $200 and got nothing. I would not recommend this company.
Sorry to say this is a common practice with this company. Everything they do is shady. They wont lasy much longer they had to sell out to Tirminix because they dont know how to be honest and it caught up with them. Its just a matter of time before all the branches sell. One day the owner and his sidekicks will get suckered into something and then they will see what it feels like. Its just amazing how many people/customers had to suffer from this dis honest company. Glad they are out of Chicago market.
I had the same experience. The sales rep in front of 10 people told me I was paying $75 for a one time treatment. This was after going round and round that I would not lock into a contract. He even wrote $75 on the form that I signed with no total amout where it said "total amount of contract". So they came out once and sprayed around. They were nice but I could tell they didn't do a lot of what the sales rep said they would do (like spray in sink drains and attic). Anyway, I thought lesson learned, I'm just out $75. Well they kept coming back trying to bill my credit card. All attempts to stop it failed. Their corporate customer service line is really some student who has calls routed to his cell phone (he admitted after me calling several times and always getting him). Also, the office managers around the country seem to all go by Jason? This is a strange outfit. I called the police/fraud division. They checked the place out and the manager agreed to refund my second $75 bill and "cancel my contract". The manager also stated "the police had no right to ask for my name and ID". That seemed odd to me. This was all after spending weeks writing letter and contacting my credit card company.
The salesman was very slick and as noted above "said anything to make the sale". We had a new baby and are both healthcare workers. The saleman stated he had a baby and his wife was a nurse - probably both bogus. I heard this was a Morman run company -if so what a shame.
I worked for homeshield. I hated it but not because of the service it just wasn't for me. As a sales rep of course they train you to sell. With any company if you are a salesman you sell better when you tell the customer what the product or service will do for them; you don't need to know all the technical details at first. I sold insurance, cars, telephones, timeshares and other products. It's all the same anywhere you go! I sprayed for homeshield and their service does work. I've seen it. Any door to door company is going to have some shady guys. Normally for every one complaint they get they have 10 or 20 happy customers, but when they do have guys misrepresenting the company they take care of it. I've seen that too. Unfortunately it is hard to keep track of that many sales reps when they are all knocking alone. As for people "stuck" in a contract you really should read things before you sign them.
I totally agree, the sales rep had no knowledge at all and as the contract progressed, they started denying services (like spraying attic, spraying inbetween scheduled services for free if the pests dont go away etc.) promised by the sales rep. When I succeeded in putting the manager and sales rep on a conference call, the sales rep shamelessly agreed that he did not know enough when he lured me to signing the contact. Horrible mess. Waste of money.
I work for home shield and owning people is funny!
Worse company ever! After asking for the manager time and time again, I was informed by the rep who answered the phone, that the manager was not there or was not available. I just wanted to chat w/ him/her regarding the contract. That was a waste of time, because they would not let me speak w/ the manager. They are dishonest people and definately not a reputable company. The rep who came to my door insisted that she could not take a check, only a credit card for the 1 time service of $75.00. She never mentioned that what I was really signing was a contract. How many of us now will never allow anyone else to come to our door selling anything, even if what they are selling is legit. Never again will I let this dog bite me again! I'm making it my business to tell everyone about Homeshield and their tactics. I 've also writtened the Better Business Bureau about them and called their main office.
Ms. Lewis - VA
Maybe it depends on where you live. I am in Nashville and have had Homeshield for 3 years. I love them. I hardly ever have problems with bugs and they come out at a moments notice when I do. They very much explained the terms and conditions and what was covered and what was not.
I can't speak for all sale people with the company but ours have been great, fair and honest.
As for termites that is the same with most companies. If you have termite coverage it is covered if not it isn't. I have had issues with many other companies similar to what you stated above. I think it is more of a location or franchise type of thing.
Hate to hear you had a bad experience. Totally stinks when salespeople are dishonest. I have been in sales for 20 years and it gives my field a bad name.: (
Totally agree. Homeshield pest control is an absolute cheater! I was hoaxed into a 2 year contract and with a cancellation fee of $350. The worst company in the US!
I can vouch for this complaint. I worked as a sales rep for Homeshield in VA Beach, VA. We recieved no training on the services offered or the chemicals used. Instead we were trained on how to sould like we knew the services. We would have daily meetings and learn how to overcome any arguement a customer came up with. The goal was to sign up customers at any cost. I was told by my office manager that i should tell customers anything to get them to sign the contract and as long as they didn't call back and cancel in the first three days they were stuck anyway so it didnt matter. I was suprised one day when i went with one of the guys who actually sprayed the customers houses and found out that the service rendered was not even half of what we were trained to tell customers they were getting. We were told to go into areas that required soliciting permits and if we were approached about it to just "play dumb". Told to knock on houses that had NO SOLICITING signs on the door.
Another thing they train their salesmen not to tell you is that they DO NOT cover dammages caused by insects. Their "Gurantee" simply is that they will come to your house again and re-spray for bugs. If you get termites or carpenter ants that wreck your house, Homeshield will simply show you the fine print that the sales rep failed to tell you before you sign up.
We were encouraged to keep an eye out for dangerous bugs to show people. The owner of the company took us out into a field one day and showed us the best places to find Black Widow Spiders. He then told us to keep sticky spider traps with us at all times to catch the spiders to show to customers and tell them we had just been lucky enough to catch it in their front yard, proving that their house was infested and the customer needed the service
From what I am reading in this complaint and from the contract that I have in front of me from homeshield, this complaint is a complete overstatement. If you are blind you will not see the terms of the agreement, completely understood, but everything on there is black and white. As for a dishonest rep? I'm sure that wouldn't be tolerated by company management and would not reflect the morals of the the way the company is run. As stated, when explained to an office employee about a specific situation what happened? Favor was given to the customer and the contract was voided.
I was explained everything by the representative and was told about the cancellation policy. I have been a customer with HomeShield for 2 years now and have never had a problem with them. They keep the bugs away and I that is what I signed up for.