DENVER — While bugs are just a part of life during a Colorado summer, the black widows in Kevin Krauth’s backyard have reached problematic levels as of late. So, when a service representative for a pest control company came up to his home — dressed in a polo, and pitching a “natural” solution to his problem — he was interested.
“The pricing was right,” Krauth remembered thinking. “They gave us a ‘promotion’ because they were already in the neighborhood. And we decided that, yeah, we’d give it a shot. And that’s where things went wrong.”
The pricing Krauth said he agreed to was $179 for a year’s worth of service from EcoShield Pest Solutions, and he said he went to great lengths to confirm with the sales rep multiple times that he was only agreeing to one payment for the year. A few days later, however, he learned that he had been enrolled in quarterly payments to the company.
“They do everything on an iPad, which makes sense — but it’s a sunny day and you don’t actually physically get to hold the contract,” Krauth recalled. “So, when we were going through all this, I wasn’t able to see the various different quarterly terms, which would have revealed the full amount. And it turns out, it’s about five times more than [described].”
Upon learning that he was going to be billed the quoted price quarterly, rather than annually, Krauth then began what he described as a long, frustrating process to connect with the company and cancel his service. He said he met multiple dead ends on phone calls with overseas call centers, while repeatedly trying to reach a manager locally.
Around the same time, he learned that his neighbor across the street had been made the same promises and was now locked into payments as well.
Andrea Beatty told Denver7 she agreed to the service initially, in part, because she was told by the sales rep that Krauth had just signed up for the service. Having dealt with ants inside her home, she said she was “kind of excited” about the pledged natural pest remedy in the beginning. That excitement quickly changed to frustration and anger when she learned that she had been mislead by the representative.
“I mean, it just really frustrated me because I was cautious to begin with,” Beatty said. “I specifically asked him so many times, like, will there be any more charges? Is this really the only charge to the end for the whole year? And I just kept getting reconfirmed that that was true, and then clearly it wasn’t.”
A quick scroll through Yelp reviews for the company suggests that Krauth and Beatty are not alone, with many one-star responses accusing pushy and dishonest sales tactics.
Denver7 called and emailed EcoShield Pest Solutions, and was sent a statement from a representative with the company’s customer care department.
“We have invested significant time, resources and technology into making sure that we have safeguards in place to ensure that our customers review, know and agree to the terms of their service with our family during the sign up process,” said Sara Blanchfield, director of customer care. “We conduct ourselves with the intent to set the standard of excellence in our industry when it comes to thoroughness, accuracy and integrity at the point of sale.”
Blanchfield also said she hopes to connect with Beatty and Krauth so they can be “taken care of as an act of good faith.”
Krauth said he was finally able to get his commitment canceled, without the high cancellation fee initially threatened. He has resolved to accept his initial payment of $179 as a lesson in “buyer beware.”
Beatty, for her part, has not yet successfully canceled her membership, but is continuing her back and forth with company representatives.
They both said they wanted to speak out to warn their other neighbors to think twice when approached by sales representatives.
“I feel a little bit that these organizations prey on people like me and my neighbors. This is a great, safe neighborhood with kids around. You know, wasps, bee stings, black widows, those are things that we are concerned about," Krauth said. “I would absolutely be happy with the service for the price they quoted. But when it’s going to be, you know, four or five times as much, you feel cheated. And so the reason I’m talking to [Denver7] is I want other people to know that it is a buyer beware situation—but you want to make sure that you’re not scammed.”
