For those of you who have ever purchased a home, a home inspection is a part of the process you became familiar with. For the person selling the home, the time an inspector spends at the home is particularly nerve-racking, because any defect the inspector finds impacts the potential sale. In a worse-case scenario, a buyer may pull out of the sale altogether if a defect becomes too costly to repair.
But what if the home inspector stood to benefit from the inspection by seeking out a repair opportunity? For this (and other) reasons, state laws have mandated that a home inspector cannot perform any corrective action to a home they’ve inspected, nor can they recommend a contractor or repair person at a home they’ve inspected. The reason: conflict of interest. Plain and simple, the person inspecting the home shouldn’t have a vested interest in the outcome of the inspection, nor should his or her inspection be influenced by the possibility of benefitting from a defect.
For bed bug inspections, we believe that the inspection should follow the same guideline, and it’s what we’ve always provided at Atlantic Bed Bug Inspection – a qualified, independent inspection being performed by an experience team that has no vested interest in the outcome of the inspection. We were one of the first companies in the nation to provide this service, expecting this would be the inspection the public would prefer, if it were available. The experience and expertise we’ve gained inspecting for bed bugs for the past 5 years now rivals that of any company nationally – including the largest, licensed pest control companies.
Our bed bug inspections are not only non-vested interest, but they’re conducted by someone who was performing bed bug visual inspections on a regular basis before utilizing a highly-trained K9 to do so. In fact, our bed bug inspections were exceeding the standards recently suggested by the National Pest Management Association before those standards were even initiated. Additionally, the level of K9 that we employ exceeds every national guideline in terms of training and certification.
Through it all, we’ve maintained our independent status at every turn:
* We generate no income whatsoever from bed bug remediation.
* We’ve never received so much as a single dollar from a pest control company that provided bed bug remediation based on our findings.
* We’ve turned down every offer from pest control companies to refer business to them for a % of profit.
* We don’t utilize our K9 to benefit from a bed bug presence, as nearly all pest control companies that own their own K9’s do.
* We’re not an affiliation of a pest control company, nor were we incorporated by one (which is something many pest control companies have done in order to generate more business).
* We’re a company that had experience inspecting for bed bugs prior to purchasing a K9 (which is not the case for nearly every independent bed bug inspection company out there).
We suggest that any pest control company offering bed bug K9 detection service should always be doing so through a third-party, independent inspection company, and it’s what the best, most-honest pest control companies do. They will indicate as much on their website, or when they’re asked over the phone, so that any conflict of interest is removed.
As an experienced, licensed pest control company will always be your best way to solve a bed bug problem, your bed bug inspection is best left in the hands of an experienced, independent bed bug inspector, when and where it’s available.