I am a new customer who contacted you for carpenter ant treatment at my home in Millstone Township. Your inspector Steve Gunneson came to my home on June 24, 2019 to evaluate the carpenter ant problem we discovered as a flooring contractor was removing surface hardwood to replace with porcelain tile. The contractor told us that he would delay the install until a professional exterminator could evaluate the condition. The front entry and two adjoining closets on the front face of my home had a moderate - certainly not a severe infestation - ant problem. Mr Gunneson inspected this area as well as the basement underneath, then circled the house to make a full inspection. His recommendation was that a one time treatment would alleviate our problem.

On July 27, a service technician came to our home to treat with a pesticide called Fipronil according to the invoice, order # 16532500. My wife greeted the service technician and kept detailed notes of his visit and treatment activity. If the treatment produced the expected remediation, I would probably just provide a happy public review and not waste my time writing this internal review.

It is now July 14 and carpenter ants continue to crawl across our newly installed floor. I have photos of a typical morning where we usually see 2-3 ants crawling around before we kill them. This is not the outcome we expected. Even worse, we are beginning to see ants on the second floor of our home. One positive result of the treatment: our wood deck on the rear face of our house has clearly shown a big decrease in ant activity, so we believe that around this area the compound was applied, and is effective. However, we called Viking specifically for the area on the front face of our house to fix an issue where our contractor was working, and we do not see any relief here.

From a customer perspective, we see the following specific weaknesses in the service:

1. Invoice details that a 0.25 gallon, or 1 quart, of solution was applied to windows an foundation around my house. How is it possible that 1 quart of material could be evenly applied around a property of my size? Does not make sense. It took the service technician less than 5 minutes to do this application. Incredibly, he did not appear to be briefed on where the alleviation was needed most, did not treat any windows as far as we could tell.

2. The front face of my home, where the major problem is, is slightly obstructed by bushes. How are we to believe that the technician accessed this area with sufficient pesticide?

3. Cost of treatment: I provided Mr. Gunneson with a $50 new customer treatment coupon, that was supposedly applied to our treatment invoice. Somehow we still paid more for a one time service call ($318) than other NJ exterminators suggested for carpenter ant treatment. Are we to believe that your service is really $349 and not $299? No way for us to know - you are far from transparent in this regard.

Again, if we saw the relief promised by your inspector, I would not be spending time writing to you about unsatisfactory results. Please read my evaluation carefully and respond to me about my points of concern. I have no problem with another service call if you think this is required. For now, I would prefer to withhold any star rating here or on a public website until you have a response. Unfortunately, this site forces me to rate before you have had a chance to respond. I will be happy to re-rate if Viking wishes to look at how my problem was managed and can suggest a solution. Thank you.

Paul Mann
32 Robbins Road
Clarksburg, NJ 08510.