What We Will Refuse to Do, and Why

Most pest control marketing is a list of what a company will do. What is often more informative is what it will not, because that is where the judgement sits.

This is our list, with the reasoning rather than the position.

Mist a home instead of treating the source

Misting kills the flying insects present at that moment and leaves little behind, so we use it together with removing breeding water and a residual band along the walls where insects rest, never as the whole job. Nobody stays in the room while it is misted, and the room is aired before use.

For large outdoor areas and industrial yards we use thermal fogging, alongside the same source work. As a monthly measure on its own, in a residential building, misting is money spent on the visible half of a problem.

Treat where nothing needs treating

If a survey finds that the answer is a dry floor trap, we will say so and charge for the inspection rather than proposing a treatment. Roughly one residential enquiry in six resolves this way, and attending to apply product to a property that needs a plumber is not a service.

The same applies to preventive treatment of a clean empty apartment where nothing was found. We will do the proofing instead and say why.

A technician treating a covered walkway in a school yard.

Apply residual to accessible surfaces in a nursery

In a room used by children under three, every horizontal surface below knee height is a surface that will be crawled on, touched and mouthed. That does not call for a weaker product; it calls for a method that puts nothing there.

Where a situation genuinely requires more than gel bait and crack-and-joint treatment, the room closes for a period or the work waits. We would rather lose the scheduling argument than perform a version of the work we would not accept in our own homes.

Use glue boards for rodents or geckos in a home

They are indiscriminate, the animal dies slowly, and the outcome is worse than the problem. They have a narrow place in a food factory where a single animal must be located quickly and every alternative has been considered, checked within hours.

For monitoring we use non-toxic blocks; for control, break-back traps or secured stations. In a domestic setting we will not use glue for a vertebrate at all.

Put toxic bait in a sealed ceiling void

A rodent that dies inside an unreachable void produces a strong odour for two to three weeks in a space nobody can access, and in an air-conditioned apartment that odour circulates through the property. Trapping with monitored placements plus sealing the route avoids it and gives you a body you can remove.

Where a customer insists, we explain the likely outcome first and record that we did.

A technician treating a school furniture store room.

Claim a product is completely safe

No registered insecticide is meaningfully described that way without qualification, and a company that says it is telling you about its sales training. What is achievable is a method with no accessible residue, which is a different and checkable claim.

We will tell you the active ingredient, the concentration and precisely where it was placed, and let a doctor or a vet answer anything medical.

Backdate a report

For a site preparing for an audit, a fabricated record turns a documentation finding into a question about the integrity of the whole quality system, and it puts our own registration at risk. A documented gap with an explanation is a far better position and we will help construct that instead.

Guarantee elimination in a dense alley or a shared building

Where a property shares walls, drainage and roof junctions with untreated neighbours, the honest objective is exclusion and reduction rather than elimination. Promising more than that sells a visit and produces a disappointed customer three months later.

We would rather set the expectation correctly at the survey, even where a competitor is promising something better.

Common questions

Can you just mist the whole house?

Not on its own. Misting kills the flying insects present and leaves little behind, so by itself it treats the visible half of the problem. We mist as part of a programme that also removes breeding water and treats the walls where insects rest, and nobody stays in the room while it is misted.

Do you charge for a visit that finds nothing?

For an inspection, yes, because the survey is the work and it is what produced the answer. It is normally considerably less than a treatment, and it frequently saves the customer more than it costs. What we will not do is convert a nil finding into a treatment in order to justify the trip.

Is refusing work not bad for business?

In the short term. Over a few years it is the opposite, because a household told honestly that it needs a plumber rather than a technician calls back when it genuinely needs one, and tells its neighbours. In a market where most enquiries arrive by recommendation, that turns out to be the better arrangement.