You always hear people tell you to make sure you shop around before you buy anything. Most people equate this experience to things like buying a car or a new TV. If you are anything like me then you probably don’t do it as much as you should.
Comparison shopping works just as well for services as it does for consumer goods. You could liken the experience to a a government request for proposal process. You line up several potential companies, ask them all to perform a specified service and see what shakes out. The advantage you have is that you can then pit the proposals against each other to further lower the costs. I recently found termites near my garden which caused me to want to get protection for my house, the garden is only a little ways away.
I called a total of four different pest control companies and asked each one to come out and provide me a termite inspection and a quote for a bait type termite prevention system. I have opted to leave out the business names for the sake of the guys giving the quotes, you will see why a little later on.
Bug Guy #1 (Regional Chain)
The first bug eradication company offers the Sentricon termite baiting system and because my home is newish he will be willing to give me a new home discount if things check out. Bug Guy #1 does the following: he performs a detailed walk down of every inch of interior and exterior walls on the first floor, inspects all door jams, and looks inside the garage. He measures off the linear feet around the house, draws a pretty graph of the house, and then gives me a lengthy run down of termites and how the operate and how bait systems work. His quote is for $399 to install the bait system and the first quarter of monitoring, each quarter after that is $62.50. In total that makes it $586.50 for the first year and $250 per year after that for maintaining the system. This all includes a damage replacement guarantee if termites ever get in and do damage to my home.
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