OPINION | PPC112 September 2023

Martin Harvey, Managing Director of BPCA member company Harvey Environmental Services, talks about pricing, surveys and client expectations. 

Professional or cowboy? Take your pick.

We recently had a long-term, multi-site client contact us to say that they had been given a much cheaper quote for their pest control, and we needed to do something with our pricing or lose the work.

After a conversation, it transpired that this other company had not been to any of the sites but had given standard rates to a purchasing group which had, in turn, used these to put the proposal together.

Wow. Just wow. How professional.

The trade association that our company belongs to (BPCA) insists that surveys are carried out before quoting for a programme of work – which makes perfect sense.

“Surveys take time if they’re done properly. Perhaps this investment in time is too much faff for the cowboy operator...”

The survey is the start of the process and is done to:

• Establish pest activity levels
• Identify the risk rating of the site, which impacts the number of inspections and treatments recommended
• Enable a treatment plan to be devised
• Consider risks to people and the environment
• Work out a realistic price for the work.

It’s a sensible and professional approach so why would anyone do it differently?

Surveys take time if they’re done properly. Perhaps this investment in time is too much faff for the cowboy operator, so they snatch the opportunity for a sale on a ‘take the rough with the smooth’ basis?

We recently turned away a large opportunity in central London where the enquirer wanted us to survey ten sites in a morning (by the way, they originally didn’t want us to survey at all)!

I explained that it would not be possible, and that surveying ten sites may take five days to do properly and pull the reports together. They pulled a face. I also told them this would be a considerable amount of investment and we would be looking to charge for this - an even bigger face was pulled!

We thought, “if it’s going to be like this at the start of the relationship, what’s it going to be like going forward” and took the enquiry no further.

We believe that there is no such thing as ‘one-size-fits-all’ with pest control. You don’t buy pest control ‘off-the-shelf’, and commercially it should be very much part of the management system of the company purchasing the service. BPCA agrees with this, and that’s why the Association published a Code of Best Practice regarding ‘surveys first’ many years ago.

Code of Best Practice – Surveys: BPCA Codes of Best Practices are available for anyone to download and read on the BPCA website. All BPCA members must follow the Codes to meet membership criteria, but non-members are welcome to use them too.

bpca.org.uk/codes

The trouble is that some in the industry do a ‘one-size-fits-all’ without surveying and hope for the best. Indeed, they’ll often promise ‘unlimited free call-outs’ as part of the bargain.

Treating pest control as a commodity encourages the race to the bottom with quality and pricing. The customer will likely suffer with the quality of work, and the pest control company will suffer if the pricing is way out – leading to even worse quality.

The best way to avoid this situation is to go right back to the beginning, play by the rules and get proper surveys done – this is the starting point!

This approach is far more likely to deliver the result for everybody – short, medium and long term.

What do you think?

Send us your views on Martin’s opinion piece and we may print them in the next issue.
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