Pest control in Marietta › Choosing a company
This is the long version of the vetting checklist: how to tell a company that has measured your house from one that looked at it from the driveway. Start with the complete guide for the method, then come back here when the proposals are on your kitchen table.
The short version
License first, then footage, then product, then warranty structure, then renewal terms, then who actually turns up, then whether any of it is written down. Everything that goes wrong later was decided at that table.
1 The license is the floor
Georgia licenses structural pest control through the Department of Agriculture. A company treating your home for hire holds a company license and keeps a designated certified operator for each category it works in: household pest, wood-destroying organisms, fumigation. That operator need not be the owner; plenty of sound companies employ one.
Technicians carry a state-issued employee identification card. Ask to see it at the door. A licensed operator hands it over without a flicker.
Treat all of that as the floor rather than the recommendation. A license says the state permits this company to apply restricted products to your house. It says nothing about whether anyone will go under it. That is what the next seven questions are for.
2 Seven questions, in this order
The order matters: each answer sets up the next. Ask them out loud, at the house, while the inspector is still there.
1. What is the measured linear footage of my foundation?
For termite work the measured perimeter is the whole basis of the job: how much soil gets trenched, how much product goes in the ground, how long the crew is on site. A number off a wheel or a tape belongs on the proposal. If nobody can tell you the footage, nobody has worked out the job. More in why measured footage decides a termite job.
2. Which product, and is it repellent or non-repellent?
They should answer this without checking the van. A repellent product pushes termites away from the treated soil and relies on an unbroken barrier; a non-repellent one is undetectable to them, so they walk through it and carry it back. Different strategies, different failure modes. Whoever is selling you one should be able to say why your foundation suits it. “Our standard treatment” is not an answer.
3. Is the warranty retreatment-only, or does it include repair — and what is the cap?
Retreatment-only means that if termites come back, so do they, with a sprayer. A repair bond means they also pay to put right the damage. People confuse the two constantly. If it is a repair bond, ask what the cap is and where in the document it is written, because every one has a limit and a list of exclusions. What a termite bond covers goes through both tiers line by line.
4. What do years two and three look like, in writing?
Year one is the year they are selling. Years two and three are the years you live with. Ask what the renewal terms are, what the annual re-inspection includes, and what happens if a renewal lapses by a month. Get it on paper. A company that will commit to its own renewal terms in writing is telling you how it runs.
5. Who does the work — your technician or a subcontractor?
Subcontracting is not automatically bad, but you are entitled to know whose truck is coming and who carries the warranty if the sub moves on. Ask whether the same technician handles your property each visit. Continuity matters, because the second visit is when somebody notices the moisture in the northeast corner has got worse.
6. Will you put the inspection findings in writing, including conducive conditions?
Conducive conditions are the things about the house that invite the problem: soil-to-wood contact, a downspout dumping at the footing, mulch above the brick ledge, a blocked crawl vent, standing water under the house. They are the half of the job you can do yourself, and the written list is the most useful page you get out of the visit. A company that writes them down is inspecting; one that does not is selling.
7. Is the bond transferable if I sell?
Georgia is a heavy termite state and buyers here know it, so an active, transferable bond is worth having at closing. Ask whether it transfers, whether the new owner has to re-inspect, and whether the repair tier survives or drops to retreatment-only. Some bonds quietly downgrade on change of ownership, and nobody hears about it until the closing table.
Ask these at your own kitchen table
Tell us your city and what you are seeing, and we will connect you with a licensed independent company that works it.
3 The red flags
None of these are judgment calls. Each is a company telling you in advance how it intends to behave.
- A number given over the phone with nobody seeing the property. Your perimeter has not been measured, your foundation type is unknown and your crawlspace has not been opened. Whatever was said gets revised on the day.
- Pressure to sign today. Subterranean termites have usually been in a structure for years before anything swarms. Forty-eight hours changes nothing except who holds the advantage in the conversation.
- Refusal to enter the crawlspace, paired with a confident opinion about what is under there. The clearest signal on the list. Nobody can tell you the sill plate is sound from the front steps.
- A proposal that will not name the product. The active ingredient and the label are not trade secrets, and the label carries the real handling and re-entry instructions.
- Anyone who cannot explain the difference between the inspection and the bond. The inspection reports what is visible today; the bond is a contract about what happens next. Someone who runs the two together in conversation will run them together in writing.
A milder version: a proposal that describes a generic house. If it never mentions your foundation type or the wet corner the inspector stood in, it was written before the visit. How a correct job is sequenced is set out in the Marietta pest control guide.
4 Two proposals, not five
The standard advice is three or four. In practice two competent proposals, read side by side, tell you almost everything a stack of five would, and sooner. Five sales visits is three weeks of your evenings, and by the fourth you are comparing personalities instead of documents. Two is the number.
Lay them flat and look at where they disagree. If one says 186 linear feet and the other says 240, one measured and one paced. If one lists six conducive conditions and the other lists none, that is not a difference of opinion about your house but a difference in how long somebody spent under it.
Time it out of season if you can. Inspectors across the county book out during the March to May swarm, and a crew three weeks behind is not a crew that spends ninety minutes in your crawlspace. Town-by-town detail sits under pest control across Cobb County.
5 Read before you sign
How the perimeter is walked and taped, and why it belongs on the document.
Retreatment-only against repair, the exclusions in both, transfer on sale, and the yard work that voids one.
What a Georgia company works through before writing anything down: perimeter, foundation, access, severity, species.
6 Questions
How do I check that a company is licensed in Georgia?
Ask for the company license number and the name of the designated certified operator, then confirm both with the Georgia Department of Agriculture’s structural pest control program. Ask the technician at your door for the state-issued employee identification card as well. A company in good standing gives you all three without being chased.
Is a national company or a local one better?
Neither, reliably. National operators have standardized bond paperwork that transfers cleanly at closing and more capacity during the spring swarm. Local operators tend to send the same technician back. What predicts your experience is that technician and the warranty language, not the logo on the truck.
Do you rank or recommend specific companies?
No. We have no way to verify another business’s workmanship, and a league table we could not stand behind would be worth less than nothing to you. We connect you with a licensed independent company that works your city, and we may be paid for that connection. How we work sets out the whole arrangement.
Start here
The complete Marietta pest control guide
What a correct job looks like on Piedmont red clay, how crawlspace and slab homes differ, and the questions that separate a real proposal from a guess.
Jaylan Jones — Cobb County Pest Solutions publishes independent guidance for North Georgia homeowners. We are a referral service, not a licensed pest control contractor, and we do not perform the work. How we work.
