Pest Control and Bug Exterminator Blog

As a technician in San Antonio, Texas you see a lot of different things, meet a lot of people & enter some interesting houses.  As usual, on one of our hot summer days, I stopped by a customer’s home that was on my route for a routine service.  I parked my truck, got out & walked to the front door to greet the customer.  A lady pleasantly answered the door. I proceeded with my routine script, “Hello Ms, my name is Ande. I’m from Bulwark Exterminating & I’m here to do your routine service. Are you having any pest problems or seeing anything inside your home?” She replied, “Yes. I’ve seen a couple of those pincher things inside my kitchen,” as she moved her fingers in a pinching motion. I smiled & informed her that I could do an interior & exterior treatment for her.

I went to my truck, grabbed my equipment & returned to the home. She told me to come on in. I asked her if she wanted me to treat just her kitchen or the whole interior. She opted for the whole interior. I tend to work clockwise in a home, so I informed her that I would start by the front door & just work my way around. She responded okay. The first room to my right was a bedroom as I entered I noticed there was a lady lying on the bed, under the covers watching TV. I asked her if she wanted me to treat her room. She said yes.

As I proceeded to the window, to do a window treatment, I could here a faint growling sound. I turned around to see where the sound was coming from, but I did not see anything or anyone besides the lady. I continued towards the window and as I’m treating the window the growling continues. I looked back towards the lady on the bed and she just smiled. As I move towards the back bedroom corner to finish checking the corners for pest, all I keep thinking about is why is this woman growling at me? I tell myself that I need to hurry up & finish this room because the lady no longer wants me in her room. The growling intensifies & as I turn to head out the room barking begins. Now I’m really thinking this woman is crazy & I need to get out of this house. Just then she grabs the covers & says, “Princess stop barking!”

To my relief she pulls a small tea cup Chihuahua from under the covers.  I’ve never been so on edge in a in my life. I’m glad my imagination didn’t run wild, the lady wasn’t acting crazy & a cute little “Princess” could entice more than just pests to leave a room.

We had a customer recently call on the afternoon of her service, to find out when the tech would be there. I let her know she was scheduled for the morning, so she should already have either an invoice or a notice that we missed her for some reason. She said she thought so too, but didn’t see anything. I let her know I would call her back after checking with the technician to find out what happened. The tech remembered treating her home, and remembered that she had a pond in her yard, and said he left the invoice in the backdoor. I let the customer know this and she was very confused. She wanted to call her neighbor to find out if they were serviced already. When she called back she asked if there would be some reason to not leave the invoice for her, because her neighbor got their invoice. I told her if she didn’t believe the tech was there, we could send someone back to treat again for her. She said she believed me, and that wouldn’t be necessary, but was still baffled that she always could find the paperwork and didn’t see it anywhere today. I told her I would mail her a copy of the invoice when the tech brought it to the office and she said that would be great. She called again about an hour later, laughing so hard. She said she completely forgot that she has a backdoor to one of the bedrooms. She had found the invoice tucked right into the door, just like the tech promised. She apologized for making such a stink and said she felt so silly for not thinking of that before. She thanked me for all my help, and for all the calls back and forth trying to figure it out.

Jamie

St. George branch

Unique story-  Rodney Crumpton

This week I was running a route in Chandler, in an area I was assigned to as a missionary in 2001.   One of my stops was Susan Powell.  I didn’t recognize the name at first but the memories came back as I was driving down the gravel road to a family’s house I had become good friends with during my stay in Chandler 8 years ago.  When Mrs. Powell came to the door I let her know that I was with Bulwark but that I had been to her house before and she had fed me dinner about 8 years ago.  She reached back into her memory bank and asked me my name and when I told her my last name, her face lit up and she quickly invited me in to see her wall of family pictures with her grown children and grandchildren.  After we caught up, I told her that I was impressed that she had been with Bulwark for over 5 years on a monthly treatment plan.  She said that Bulwark has always been great no matter who she talked with on the phone or at her home.  And that they almost never see a bug inside their house.  As an employee at Bulwark since 2000 this was a very rewarding experience, I hope to continue to serve the Powell’s and other families that are as delightful as they are.

We had a gentleman call for a service quote, and said he had tiny white bugs biting him.  He said they were jumping all over his house and he had bites all over his ankles and legs.  We sent a technician out to assess the situation and bring back a sample of the bugs in question.  The technician went to the man’s home, and looked everywhere for the bugs the man had called about.  The technician spoke with the man for a long time about where he was when he would get bitten the most.  He said everywhere, not in just a specific area.  He said they were jumping all over the carpets.  He pointed down to the carpet, and helped the technician put them in a Ziploc baggie, so he could show the manager and find out what they were.  The technician looked in the baggie, and noticed… lint.  He told the gentleman that those were not bugs, but in fact, just lint.  The man disagreed, and said that’s what has been biting him.  The technician looked more closely in the carpets to try to find something resembling an actual bug, but could find nothing.  The man was positive that the lint was not lint, but bugs.  The technician thanked the man for his help in collecting the specimen, and let himself out.

Jamie

St. George

My name is Roger James and I’ve been a technician for Bulwark for four years now.  I am a team leader and service the community of Steiner Ranch which is in Austin, Texas.

My wife and I used to live in California before we made the decision to move out to Austin, Texas.  I never realized how beneficial my experience in California would be for my job until I started working for Bulwark.  I have ended up meeting so many customers who also used to live in California.  This has helped me gain their trust and loyalty because I feel that we can identify with the many differences between both states.

One family comes to mind this past summer.  I was actually spraying a regular customer’s lawn when a man quickly approached me.  He said that he saw my Bulwark truck and hoped I could help him out.  He went on to explain that his family had just moved here from California a couple days ago and they had large fire ant mounds all over their front and back yard.  I ended up servicing the inside and outside of their home that very day paying special attention to the ant mounds.  He decided to sign up for a year’s contract with Bulwark before I left that day.  It was nice for him to hear that I could relate to what they were going through.  You see, the fire ants in California are nothing compared to the fire ants here in Texas. The first time you get stung by a Texas fire ant- You too will want to call Bulwark for HELP!!!  He also asked me if it were true that scorpions actually come into houses here in Texas.  After I let him know that this is possible, I went on to further explain that Bulwark treats their customer’s houses in order to help prevent scorpions from coming in.

A woman in a Phoenix neighborhood flagged me down one day while I was working.  She wanted to know about our company (how much we charge and what services we offer).  After talking with her for a couple of minutes I finally got out of her that she was unhappy with her current pest control company.  She said they are in and out in 5 minutes and do not listen to her when she asked them to do something.  I told her that we would offer her the best customer service and professionalism while also solving all her bug problems.  She agreed to give us a chance.

When I serviced her house I made sure that I understood all her needs.  I knew that she needed a company that showed her that we cared about her.  I spent little extra time inspecting her home for problem areas.  Her entire backyard is grass, so I knew that the moisture from the sprinklers probably attracts many bugs like cockroaches and crickets.  This is what I felt was where the problem was starting.  I made sure that I used our Bifen granules to treat her grass.  I told her to let us know how things went.  Every month since her initial service this past summer, she has been bug free and is very thankful for our help.

Jameson Hunter

Phoenix branch technician

A couple of months ago we had a customer call in to schedule an interior service. He let me know he had just left town, and was going to be gone for a while, but that he had noticed some bugs inside before he left. He said he felt comfortable letting the technician treat inside without him being home. He gave me the alarm code for his house, and the code to unlock the front door, and just asked that the technician relock and reset the alarm when he was finished. We chatted for a bit, and he let me know that he had some steaks in the refrigerator that he wasn’t able to cook before he left, and they would go bad before he was home again. He asked that the technician please take the steaks out of the fridge, and he can keep them if he wants. He let me know they are really good fat steaks, and he would really appreciate if we helped him out with this. When I asked the tech to get the steaks out of the fridge he just laughed, but said they did look good and he wanted them. I just thought this was one of the oddest requests for pest control.

Jamie
St. George, UT

It was my second year as a pest control technician and was beginning to realize how much I enjoyed my job.  As a pest control technicians we are trusted to serve our customers to the best of our ability, in a kind, courteous way and we have a lot of freedom in how we accomplish this.  We have all day to complete our services and are often given opportunity throughout the day to earn more money.  I enjoyed all of this, but one day I realized that killing bugs was easy, I was enjoying the time I had to interact with our customer.  I would find myself almost daily impressed with the unique and amazing people we serve.  I have met NFL quarterbacks, World War 2 Heros, City Mayor’s, and even an Aid to the President of the United States.  All this was great but one day I met a little boy that couldn’t have been more than 9 years old.  He was in his pajamas and I was working late and tired.  This boy asked me “Do you like your job?”  I thought for a moment as I screwed an outlet cover plate to the wall I had just treated.  Then I responded that “I do like my job.  I get to meet nice people, see beautiful homes and landscaping, and most of all I get to make your home a safer, better place to live.”  This little boy looked at me with a look that expressed to me he really only wanted a yes or no answer and walked away.  I was left with a new goal at every customers home.

Wayne Bryant

Las Vegas, NV

During one hot summer in Austin, I was performing first time services for new Bulwark customers and training a new technician.  It was getting late in the week and the two of us had performed several first time services, so I told the trainee to get started on the outside and I would go inside, talk to the new customer, and get started performing the inside service.  I expected the trainee to come inside after doing the weephole screening and power spraying the perimeter, but after about half an hour, he had not yet come inside.  I explained to the new customer that I was going outside to check on my partner and that I would be back inside in just a few moments.  The hose was on the reel in the back of the truck, the weepholes were already meshed, but the trainee was nowhere to be found around the outside of the home.  I didn’t want to start yelling his name and cause any of the neighbors to question the professionalism of the technicians working for Bulwark, so I decided to finish the inside service, and think about where the trainee could have gone.  I completed the interior work and explained to the new customer, what I had done on the inside, what products were used and how they worked.  After thanking the customer and in the process of walking out the door, the customer said very calmly and nonchalantly, “make sure the dog doesn’t follow you out the gate, she has a habit of escaping” and the customer followed me out into the yard.  As we walked, I recognized the trainee, sweat dripping off of his face and petting a little dog in the yard.  The customer then told the trainee, “I’m surprised you two are getting along, she’s quite an escape artist, anytime someone comes into the yard, she gets out”, to which the trainee replied, “oh no ma’am we pay close attention when there a pets in the yard, we would never let anything happen to someone’s pet”.  The trainee and I left the home and hopped into the truck and asked him, “where’d you go, I was looking for you?”  To which he replied, “That little dog got out when I was reeling up the hose, so I tried to catch her.”  “I have been running all over the neighborhood for that last half hour.  I couldn’t pick her up and carry her the three blocks back here because I’m allergic.  So I caught up to her and fed her my sandwich to get her to come to me.  I took off my belt and made a leash and the two of us walked back to the house right before ya’ll came out.”  We laughed for a few minutes and I offered to buy him a Gatorade and something to eat.  As we pulled into the parking place at the convenience store, there was an unmistakable “LOST DOG” picture and poster in the store’s window from one of the previous escapes by his new friend.

Russel Shoffner

Branch Manager Austin

I’m Gabby, and have worked for Bulwark Exterminating for over three years now as a Customer Service Representative. One of my many duties entails calling and scheduling customers. There is this one particular customer that called in on September 25^th 2007. This customer has been a loyal customer of ours since 2007. She has requested to have a specific technician to do her regular service and that is Roger. He is known in our office because of all the great compliments we have received from various customers. Roger services a well known gated community in the Austin, TX area. One of the great things we hear from all his customers is that he bends over backwards for our customers. Which I agree he really does.  If I could estimate there is about 30 additional customers who request Roger as well. So those customers are known as “Roger Only” customer that’s how popular he is in our office. So on that day in September the customer who was scheduled to have Roger out there that morning and got a notice left on her gate that stated her mailbox was full! She called the office to inquire what that meant. I then informed her that when we called her to let her know about the scheduled service, her voicemail was full and therefore she didn’t know about the appointment and left her gate locked. She then requested not only to have Roger go back and perform the regular service but to also delete her messages on her voice mail because she didn’t know how to do that. I explained to her that I couldn’t schedule that because that is not Roger’s area of expertise and she would have to contact her phone service provider for that. She insisted on getting Roger back out there, so I did. She continues to be a “ Roger Only” customer and I wouldn’t be surprised if Roger did go back and perform her regular service and also deleted her messages for her because again Roger always bends over backwards for his customers.