In 2016, the bed bug prognosis was unfortunate. Bar none, it was the worst year we’ve seen for bed bug infestations yet, and it was even worse than 2010, when a media frenzy regarding bed bugs lead to many people getting bed bug inspections just to make sure everything was ok. Two years later, in 2018, the infestations were real, and frequent – our company found more active infestations than we had in any year previously.
Yet as bad as bed bug infestations were last year, 2018 is shaping up to be an ever worse year than 2016. It’s very possible that in 2018 we’ll see the most bed bug infestations we’ve seen yet. Accordingly, it’s become more important than ever that property managers and office managers be able to trust the inspection that’s being provided for them, and to know that a qualified inspection performed by someone without a vested interest in the outcome is in the best interest of their company.
The value an Atlantic Bed Bug Inspection creates for an office or property manager is two-fold: 1) it’s being performed by someone who has the same qualifications & licensing as your pest control company, but without any vested-interest whatsoever in the outcome of the inspection, and 2) because we don’t stand to benefit in anyway from your eventual service solution, we’re not hoping or expecting to find bed bugs at your location. We’re simply there to give you an honest assessment.
For all of you working in property management, you know that bug bug remediation wasn’t even a line item for your company, or your pest control company, even a few years ago. For some pest control companies, bed bugs quickly became their most lucrative line item ever. If it wasn’t enough that this became the most expensive pest for you to eliminate, many of you had started to question the relationship between the expense of ridding your company of bed bugs, and the company determining whether or not you had bed bugs in the first place. Why were you thinking this? One reason was that the expense to eliminate was too extreme.
There are pest control companies who realized very early on in the fight against bed bugs that it was in their interest to sub-contract 3rd party bed bug inspectors, as they wanted their customers to trust the inspection being provided to them at all times. These companies became some of the most experienced bed bug eliminators in the industry, because the public came to trust their protocol start to finish.
Four years ago at the Bed Bug Summit in Denver, we’d learned of a couple of companies that had stopped providing bed bug elimination services for their non-core customers, including one of the largest, most successful pest control companies in the United States. It was an eye opener – why would a company stop providing a service that was potentially so lucrative to them? One of the reasons, which the executive from that large company was willing to answer in a room full of pest control professionals, was an issue of trust: they felt there were too many instances where they were being asked to provide treatment for a pest that they weren’t physically able to identify. And this company was willing to remove all doubts even their core-customers may have had, by saying, we want you to trust us at all times.
With Atlantic Bed Bug Inspection, and any similar companies that offer an independent, licensed, certified bed bug inspection, our approach is simple: we’re there to give you a non-vested interest inspection. That’s where our involvement stops. The person handling the K9 has no expectation or hope of finding bed bugs, so he’s not triggering an expectation to the K9 to find bed bugs. We won’t be compensated beyond the inspection, and more than anything, we want you to trust our inspection.