No appointment was made prior to Smart Pest's arrival at our property on 7/19/2017. No prior phone calls and no prior emails were made by Smart Pest to arrange for a mutually agreed upon time for the inspection. It should have been obvious that to the technician that he was not expected. The front gate was padlocked and no vehicles were on the property. When someone is home there is at least one vehicle in the yard. The tech (Scott) phoned Margaret when he arrived, but no one was home. She was very surprised because an email sent by your company in early July indicated the contract was up for renewal.
We were unpleasantly surprised to be billed for a so-called inspection (7/19/17) that was not prearranged and never actually occurred. We do not think this is fair. This is not the first time Smart Pest technicians have arrived without a prior appointment. Usually the techs reschedule the appointment instead of billing us for work that never occurred. This tells us that there is someone else in the company who is supposed to be making the appointments (whether a human being or an automated robot call system) and there is a problem with this part of the business. The technician should have called first to confirm the appointment--a standard business practice to prevent problems--before driving 2.5 hours from the office in Kona) and should have rescheduled the inspection instead of billing us for work not done.
Based on this poor business model--as it is a common occurrence with your company--we will not renew our inspection contract with Smart Pest when it expires. We will not recommend Smart Pest to our friends and neighbors either.