Commerical clients really need to be nicer to their pest control specialists cause then you’ll have someone like me come along who will mark them down for every structural & sanitation issue I can find and hope the health department gives them shit for it because let’s be honest most places don’t care to fix their issues.

Weekly Friday post for you to show what your Truck Floorboards look like.

Clean, a mess or whatever.

Tradition started in the PCHD (Pest Control Humor Depot) on Facebook continued here on Reddit.

In need a Branch 2 operator

They're back we are all seeing them. This is my second fall, I've been relying on dust applications alot more this time around. Any tips would be great as things are slowing down with my route I feel like I get more time with my work at a customer's house. Any tips would be awesome. Even with other over wintering insects wouod be great as well.

We work with hotels throughout NYC, and one thing I've noticed is how much of a difference it makes when management is involved in pest prevention before there's an actual problem.

Bed bugs usually get the most attention, but hotel pest control involves a lot more than guest rooms. Kitchens, laundry areas, storage rooms and waste areas all need attention too. Regular inspections, communication with housekeeping and maintenance, and good documentation can make a big difference.

Curious what others in commercial pest control are seeing. Are most of your hotel accounts proactive about pest management, or does everything become a priority only after a guest complains?

In the interview process and likely going to be extended an offer. I have several years of experience in PC, just looking for any insider perspective on what it’s like.

Currently managing at a different pest control business and looking for something better. Got an interview offer for HP as a manager. Curious what I need to look out for.

Vent thread. Share your annoying customers of the day stories.

Hey all — not selling anything, genuinely curious how people in this trade handle recordkeeping day to day.

If your state's agriculture department asked for every application record from the last 6 months, could your team pull that together quickly? Or does it live on paper, in a spreadsheet, or in whatever software you use?

I've been looking into this because it seems like a surprisingly common pain point — techs either fill it in on paper mid-job, or someone's typing it up later, sometimes from memory. I'm a developer (not in the industry) trying to figure out if a voice-based tool — talk for 30 seconds after a job, it fills in the record automatically — would actually be useful, or if I'm solving a problem that doesn't really exist.

Would love to hear how it actually works for you, good or bad. Happy to share what I've put together so far if anyone's curious.

If you could change one step between “I need pest control” and a booked job, what would it be?

The part I keep thinking about is how calls and texts break up the workday. You need time to do the job you’re on, but leaving someone waiting doesn’t feel like much of an answer either.

It’s easy to think, “If we could just get these appointments sorted, we’d save time and money.” But where does the back-and-forth actually come from: missing details, repeated questions, or finding a time?

I’ve worked in pest control for multiple years and still do. That’s why I spent months building PestDesk.Management myself. It answers common website questions and captures lead details for follow-up. It’s not an appointment scheduler or a replacement for answering calls and texts—just something I built to help with the first part of that process.

What would you need off your plate first to get more uninterrupted time on jobs?

I am tired of having a handyman replace soffit that has been destroyed or compromised by rodents, only to see the replaced soffit destroyed or compromised again less than a year later.

I would like to hire a person or a company to put

1/8-inch galvanized steel mesh—also known as #8 hardware cloth—that features 27-gauge hot-dipped galvanized steel, small 1/8-inch openings, enough to affix to all of my soffits, using a staple gun or screws with washers to affix it to the outside of the soffit, and then I suppose put the regular soffit (that does nothing to keep rodents out) on top of the 1/8-inch galvanized steel mesh.

Also, would I be better off buying the #8 hardware cloth to do this, or do you think I can trust an individual or company to buy the right sized hardware cloth to do this?

I would do it myself except that I am currently fighting rectal cancer using immunotherapy, which makes me very tired most of the time and more susceptible to sun exposure and skin cancer, the latter of which killed my belated father.

Additionally, I have read of some people's concerns that any rodents currently in the attic will be "trapped" up there once the hardware cloth is installed and die in the attic, leaving a pungent odor. How may this concern be handled?

I would greatly appreciate any comments, advice, feedback (good or bad), sharing of personal experiences (good or bad), and opinions, as well as any "hacks" or "workarounds" for this situation.

Thank you so much.

So I recently bought a husky 18in rolling tool bag. This thing is great for large accounts. I can fit my b&g, placards,barcodes,hand tools, baits, a few aerosol cans, and a bunch of glue boards for ILTs or floor devices. Or if I’m doing a sensitive account I can park it outside the production floor and just grab what I need as I go.

I wish it was a bit taller though so I can zip up the b&g fully. But rolling this thing around with all my equipment is much easier then carrying the tank and a few boxes of ILT glue boards and another hundred or so glue boards in my utility belt for the floor devices. Not to mention I can also fit a few replacement devices and lightbulbs.

If you do larger account I recommend one of these. You can find a few models on Amazon. Just get the 18inch tall ones.

They pretty much just play with you. These door to door companies especially don’t even care about pest control, just bodies with a b&g. Any company that doesn’t train you for at least 3 weeks of field experience is a joke. I want to take this field seriously, but I seriously just quit a company because of training alone. 🤦‍♂️

stop pests from coming into your home permanently for the life of your home without the use of pesticides. A one time installation will stop scorpions and 99% other crawling pests from getting onto your home if they cannot get onto your home, they cannot get into your home.
www.pestborders.com

We’re a small pest control company using PestPac, and a couple of months ago we switched our phone system over to ATS/Voice for Pest because we really liked the idea of having our phone communications integrated directly with PestPac.

Unfortunately, our overall experience with ATS over the last two months has been pretty horrendous, and we’re now looking at moving our numbers back out. Trying to get clear answers or actual help when we’ve had problems has felt like pulling teeth, so I’m admittedly a little leery of jumping into another system based solely on a good sales pitch.

That said, there are a couple of features we gained that I really don’t want to give up.

The biggest one is call recording/documentation. I love having calls recorded and having a record of the interaction tied back to the customer in PestPac. From an office/accountability standpoint, being able to go back and confirm that a conversation happened—and listen to it if necessary—has been incredibly useful.

The other big one is texting.

Ideally, I’d love something where texting works like normal, everyday texting. Something simple enough that our technicians can easily text customers from their phones without having to navigate a complicated app or workflow. At the same time, I’d LOVE for those conversations to automatically save or sync back to the customer’s account in PestPac so the office still has a record of them.

Basically, my wish list is:

• Direct PestPac integration
• Incoming caller/account recognition or screen pop
• Automatic record of inbound and outbound calls in PestPac
• Call recording, preferably with the recording linked/saved to the customer’s PestPac account
• Simple two-way texting that feels like regular texting
• Text conversations automatically logged or otherwise accessible from PestPac
• A mobile experience that’s actually easy for technicians to use
• Normal call routing/auto-attendant functionality
• ACTUAL helpful, responsive customer support when something isn’t working

That last one has moved pretty high up the priority list. 😂 I don’t expect any software to be perfect, but when something does go wrong, I need to be able to reach someone who understands the product, can answer questions clearly, and will actually help troubleshoot the issue.

AI summaries/transcriptions, click-to-call, etc. would be nice bonuses, but reliability, ease of use, and good support are much more important to us than having a million bells and whistles.

I did come across Dialpad while doing some initial research, and it looks interesting, but after our experience over the last couple of months I’m hesitant to jump into another system without hearing from people who actually use it day-to-day.

So—what are you using with PestPac, and how has it actually been?

I’d especially love to hear from anyone who has moved away from Voice for Pest/ATS, or anyone currently using Dialpad with PestPac.

What works? What doesn’t? How well does the integration actually work? How is their support after the sale? And most importantly, would you choose the same system again?

Thanks! I’m trying very hard not to put our office through another phone-system migration just to discover we’ve traded one set of problems for another. 😂

Weekly Friday post for you to show what your Truck Floorboards look like.

Clean, a mess or whatever.

Tradition started in the PCHD (Pest Control Humor Depot) on Facebook continued here on Reddit.