Please recommend your bedbug exterminator

[Anonymous]

If you have successfully gotten rid of bedbugs, I'd love to hear which exterminator you used. I am 8 months pregnant and just discovered we have bedbugs. As you can imagine, this is about to send me over the edge, so finding a good company that others have had positive experiences with would be extremely helpful. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Maybe Consumers Checkbook has some ratings?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe Consumers Checkbook has some ratings?

They do. I recommend subscribing, OP. It's a great service and can pay for itself when you use it to look for even one service--because you'll weed out the loser companies, get the best in quality and price. Just do it.

[Anonymous]

I love Consumers Checkbook too but I've read a bit about bedbugs and it seems that the best way to get rid of them is to overheat your house. I'm wondering if the appearance of bedbugs isn't so new in this area that one might have to use a specialized company to get rid of them and that the typical quality ratings for Consumers Checkbook (which we actually used to pick our first general exterminator) might not take into account bedbug specialties. OP, you might try emailing Consumers Checkbook and asking them about that before moving forward.

You could also check yelp.com and see what comes up.

[Anonymous]

I subscribe to both Washington Checkbook and to Angie's List. I recently (like last week) had to engage pest management companies to 1) inspect for bedbugs and 2) treat them if discovered.

For eradication, we'll be using American Pest Management. They do inspections as well but we wanted independent verification of the infestation. http://www.americanpest.net/bed-bug-services Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I subscribe to both Washington Checkbook and to Angie's List. I recently (like last week) had to engage pest management companies to 1) inspect for bedbugs and 2) treat them if discovered.

For eradication, we'll be using American Pest Management. They do inspections as well but we wanted independent verification of the infestation. http://www.americanpest.net/bed-bug-services Good luck.

Do most people bring these home from hotel stays? Just wondering how they got into your home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I subscribe to both Washington Checkbook and to Angie's List. I recently (like last week) had to engage pest management companies to 1) inspect for bedbugs and 2) treat them if discovered.

For eradication, we'll be using American Pest Management. They do inspections as well but we wanted independent verification of the infestation. http://www.americanpest.net/bed-bug-services Good luck.[/quote

We also had a great experience with American Pest, though not for bed bugs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I subscribe to both Washington Checkbook and to Angie's List. I recently (like last week) had to engage pest management companies to 1) inspect for bedbugs and 2) treat them if discovered.

For eradication, we'll be using American Pest Management. They do inspections as well but we wanted independent verification of the infestation. http://www.americanpest.net/bed-bug-services Good luck.

Do most people bring these home from hotel stays? Just wondering how they got into your home.

This wasn't at my home. It was in our office space. We're not sure how we got an infestation but believe they came in on someone visiting from the New York area.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks for all the suggestions, but Consumer Checkbook does not have separate ratings for bedbug exterminators. We did initially hire our regular exterminator (Ward Pest Control) based on their high CC rating, but bedbugs are apparently so tough to get rid of, that we're also looking at other firms.

To the poster who used American Pest Management--did you pay the $200 for the canine inspection? Did you feel it was worth it? We called both American Pest Management and American Pest Control (confusing!) and the latter is sending out an inspector + canine tomorrow for free, whereas American Pest Management wanted to charge us $200 just for this--plus $1,200 on top of it for the pesticide service with only a 90 day warranty.

Re solving bedbugs by heating your home -- this is true, but the heating has to be done by a professional because it needs to be something like 130 degrees, and American Pest Management quoted us $3,000-$3,500 (!) for this service, so pesticides, here we come.

As to how we got the infestation, it's not clear. We did recently travel, but the hotel we stayed in has not had any reports of bedbugs on Trip Advisor nor on the BedBug Registry website, so I hate to blame them without knowing for sure. But that's certainly a likely possibility.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if American is really so much better for bed bugs. Their CC rating is not stellar for price, quality or customer satisfaction.

[Anonymous]

Although it was not for BB treatment, I used American Pest Control (of Montgomery County) once, and I thought that PCO Brian was a pleasure to deal with. Believe it or not, he's a vegan!

[Anonymous]

I have spoken with the American Pest Control people re. bedbug treatments and felt they had a more educated and current approach than anyone else in the area. This was several years ago, and now their website suggests to me that they've kept abreast of new treatments nicely.

To OP, Given that you'll probably need many, many repeated pesticide treatments and all the work involved in bagging your possessions and getting pesticides into every single crevice, maybe the cost of the heat treatment could be worthwhile? Pesticide treatments don't have a great success rate. Although I don't know about the success rate for heat treatments, if it's higher than pesticides I would go for it.

[Anonymous]

Sorry- I think the company I consulted was American Pest Management, not Control. Same guys?