Hi everyone! This is my first post but I have been reading this forum almost every day for the last three weeks and I'm glad I have. Every one on here seems to be so helpful and very informed about bed bugs and I'm glad that I've had these postings to read during my own struggle with them, for the last three weeks. Some background and I apologize in advance, as this is going to be long: on 01/19, I had my best friend unexpectedly come in from out of state due to a family emergency. It has been almost two years since seeing her so I naturally invited her to come spend the night with her daughter at my house as she was close by and wouldn't have to shell out money for a hotel. I picked her up in my car. She had one book bag with a change of clothes and that was it. She gets here that night and we're having a great chat on the couch when she then proceeds to tell me that she has a bed bug problem in her home. I started to internally panic but tried my best not to show it. I had absolutely no clue about anything to do with bed bugs or how they can be carried around, I just knew I didn't want them. It was not until after she fell asleep that I started looking everything up on them I could and I fortunately stumbled upon this forum that I realized just how bad this situation was. One, she told me she has a lot of them and they come out at all hours. That it's been noticeable for months. She just didn't have the money to treat. Two, she said she treated them herself by using bombs and foggers (which I know now was not the thing to do) and she doesn't understand why they haven't gone away. Three, she did not practice any techniques to keep them from traveling with her. In fact, she didn't seem to know much about them at all, not unlike me, just that she didn't have money at the time to treat. Thankfully she is in the process currently of getting it set up to be treated after coming into some money. Luckily, she lives in FL and got a good price quote for the tenting of her home. I knew that from what she told me in regards to the extent of it all and how she treated it that I may have a big problem on my hands. And that turned out to be correct...The next morning, after dropping her off, I came back home and started to vacuum. I'm a stay at home mom and my five year old was talking to me while I was pushing the couch we both had sat and chatted away on further away from the wall to vacuum behind it when I turned and saw what I now know was an adult bed bug on the floor. I sucked it up and threw the bag away as quickly as I could. But her daughter had slept upstairs in MY daughters room. That's when panic sunk in. I went upstairs to look but saw nothing, which seems to be common from what I've been reading. After convincing my husband that what I saw was a bed bug and we needed to get on this, I called two pest control companies, one steam/chemical and another thermal, to come in and inspect the very next day after she left (1/21). They came in, both not seeing any signs and saying it would be too soon to see much, if anything. One company (steam/chemical) wanted to treat without visual verification, the other company (just heat) said I should wait it out another two weeks and take a wait and see approach. My husband wanted proof before we did anything else and the only way I could possibly get it, I thought, would be to call a bed bug dog service. We went back and forth for a week and, finally, I hired a reputable bed bug dog inspector to come out with his dog on 2/02. His dogs aren't cross trained for any other insect except they do chase geese away for schools/businesses, etc. Well, the dog handler and the dog come in and he marks the couch, the laundry room and then the master bedroom upstairs as having bed bugs, which he was able to visually confirm for me in one of the marked spots. I asked him if he could refer anyone to me to deal with this as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. He is an independent contractor but he does work with several Pest control companies and the one he referred was one who,when he goes behind them, nine times out of ten they are cleared and more than anyone he goes behind after service to inspect. He also tells me this company uses steam/vacuum and chemical combination. His recommended company was the third one I met and they were middle of the road in pricing. So I call this referred company to set up an appointment for someone to come out from the company the next day, to inspect and to go over a treatment plan. One does and he also visually confirms BBs in the master bed box spring. He asks me how soon can I prep, as we agreed it would be best to treat the whole house. I wanted to be prepped in a couple of days but he seemed to know better, that I wouldn't be ready until Tuesday (2/09), as I have a lot of stuff. We have three children and they have a lot of clothes, plus my father passed away a year ago and we inherited a lot of his stuff. He said that it looked like a very light infestation and that we would be all taking care of after one treatment (red flag to me). But I go ahead on anyway. So I spend all week washing on hot and drying on high heat, drying the clean clothes on high heat for forty minutes, then bagging everything up and putting it in my garage. The PCO did not ask me to remove much of my other things, such as my kids toys (other than stuffed animals, those I'd treat) and books in their book shelves, as they would inspect and treat it as they went along. However, what I did throw out like excess clutter, things under the bed, I made sure to dispose of in contractor bags and sealed before exiting the room. I felt better about the situation. The process seemed like it was going to be very thorough and detailed and the fact that they would be using a combination of things to treat felt like the right way to go. It was going to be a three day process for which we would have to be out of the house, with two treatments being done within those three days. Outlined it said they would come in and vacuum, steam, then use Nuvan strips and heaters and fans to disperse vapor into the whole house, leave it going for the second day then they'd come back on the third and vacuum and steam as needed. Treatment started three whole weeks after she'd been here. I was cautiously optimistic but felt a little better after they told me that if by some chance they didn't take care of the problem, they would come back two weeks from the treatment date and do it again at no cost to me. This, however, was a verbal exchange. Fast forward to Saturday morning; treatment was finished on Friday but we didn't come back in until Saturday morning. My confidence in the company slipped a little when I opened up the downstairs entryway closet to see a vapor strip still hanging up; then, I go upstairs and see that they left another one in my closet, as though someone forgot to take it down. Unless they meant to leave it, which wasn't noted to my husband when he went to get the key on Friday from them. My husband walked through the house briefly that day and they seemed to indicate that they were good to go but didn't give him much time to look around, due to the fumes. Back to Saturday morning. I'm upstairs looking at this vapor strip in my closet and then I turn and look around at my furniture and my confidence REALLY starts to slip as it doesn't look like anything was remotely vacuumed or treated besides the floor and baseboards. There is dust on my furniture, household dust that was there where I left it and the insides of drawers aren't vacuumed and it's very noticeable, as well as the perimeter of my bed frame that holds the slats. I'm sitting here wondering if I've just gotten duped to the tune of 1,200 bucks plus more to be billed for for three other mattress box spring encasements (for my kids beds, which they didn't think I'd need but we insisted on getting) and still haven't gotten this light infestation treated properly. I did see two dead nymphs (I think; not sure if it was the actual bug or skins) when I was putting climb ups under my bed legs and they fell out of a screw hole in the back of the head board into the interceptors. I plan on calling them back on Tuesday, after Presidents' Day, to see what the heck they did or didn't do. It almost feels like they were too confident in these Nuvan strips alone. I'm wondering what my next step should be and what I should do about the fact that they did not vacuum all my furniture, as was indicated in their treatment plan, in a knowingly infested room? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you!
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