My husband and I are military leaving soon out of state and needed to clean our air ducts and have our crawl space inspected for pests. Inspector guy comes out and goes down into the crawl space and comes back with pics of proof we had a rat. So, an initial air duct cleaning (est $300) turns into him having to go to home depot to buy air duct replacements and rat bait/traps. I ask him how much will it cost for that? He says $975. I was like ok, i think i will wait until he gives me the " I came all the way down from Seattle and am not leaving" bit. Basically, bullying me into telling him go ahead and fix it. Before he leaves i confirm with hubby over the phone the quoted price, which includes the air duct replacement and rat traps. After the replacement of the air ducts and the rat traps are set, he says he cleaned up underneath and presented me with the bill. It came out to be $1, 320.69!!! My hubby was home at the time and was furious! Luckily, i had some money to pay the guy but it was stretching it. Come to find out, when we were replacing some cable wire underneath the house the inspector/tech had in fact NOT cleaned up any insulation chewed up from the rats or their remains and feces. This weekend another inspector came out to QA/QC the previous tech's work and told him about what he did. He was nicer, but said he could not do anything about the price and if we paid him he would clean up the mess the other guy did not clean up. So, we said no thanks, we are not shelling out any more money than we have to. For the amount we paid, the guy could have least cleaned up the crawl space!!! Air ducts are still dirty, so definately going with someone else. Don't use these guys and heed these complaints!!!

I have filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and my husband and I have also written a letter of complaint to the company directly. We have had no response as of yet. I am trying to get this information out in as many venues as possible since what has happened to us is so appalling, I feel that others so know what they are getting into if they decide to do business with Alpha Ecological.

NAME: Alpha Ecological Pest Control
BBB MEMBER: YES
CONTACT: Ms Teresa Sickles
ADDRESS: 1200 NE 112th Ave
Vancouver, WA 98684
PHONE: 360 885-4000
FAX: 360 604-4294
Website: www.alphaecological.com

My Husband contacted Alpha Ecological at the beginning of March and set up services for them to come out every three months and provide pest control services. They charged us over $400.00 ($409.37 to be exact)for the initial visit, which was March 20, 2007.

They sent us a reminder card for our quarterly service on June 26. It said they would be out at 8am. On June 26th, they had not showed up by 12:30pm so my husband called them. The customer support person said that she was sorry and that they would reschedule for 1pm on Thursday the 28th and give us a $25 discount. On that day, at approximately 1:45pm, the service tech (a manager) called from Olympia saying he was returning from a meeting in Seattle and that he would be late. He arrived at about 3pm. He was complaining a lot about how far out we were and how they were not making any money on us.

Service was done within 30 minutes, where he charged us the full rate of $118.00. My husband mentioned the discount to the tech and he "flipped"; repeating that it wasn't our (the company's) fault, but they would definitely have to drop us as a customer. Almost immediately after that visit, we received a letter from Alpha Ecological that effective immediately, we were outside their service area and they were no longer going to provide services to us.

Frankly, we don't care about the second visit charge, but we do care that we had to pay so much for the first service (and they didn't follow through with their end). I would expect to get at least $300 back from the first visit, since they aren't continuing service. Any other service we move to is going to charge us the same inflated 1st visit charge as they did.

I, Andrea Foster, contacted Alpha Ecological on Friday, July 20, 2007 and spoke to Nick. I explained my complaint and that I expected at least a $300 refund. I specifically gave Nick my work number to call be back but he called me back on my home number and left a message.

I called him back today, Monday, July 23, 2007 and found out that he no longer works there! I spoke to another customer service representative and had to explain the situation all over again. She was surprised to hear that one of the technicians had been so rude and said she needed to talk with him and then call me back. She called me back right away and said that they were familiar with the situation and offered to pay for half of the last visit charge, which cost $118.00). The never did apply the $25.00 discount!

Beware!