Apple Termite

They are one of the worst companies that I have ever worked with. They never communicated well, and never had the right equipment when they came. They were also never on time. They also had employees that did not speak English. They wanted to cut out half my yard to fixed a minor problem. They did not need to cut out anything in my yard either. They were a big waste of money to me.

We opened escrow on our first house in mid November, and at that time the seller's agent had already ordered and received a termite inspection report from Apple Termite. We wrote into the sale that the sellers were required to pay for all items described in Apple's report, which I believe is customary. By the first week of January, the day our loan documents were about to expire, Apple still had not done any work on the house, even though they had scheduled at least two appointments during escrow to come to the house, both of which they no-showed for. They even submitted a Certificate of Completion and billed the sellers, although no work had been done! We closed escrow after agreeing that the seller would leave a little bit of money in escrow to cover any extra termite repair costs. Two more appointments were confirmed by Apple, in writing: 1/14/12 and 1/31/12, both of which Apple "no-showed" without calling, and with the office calling the sellers agent to tell her that they were "five minutes away from the house". Questioning whether Apple was even a legitimate company, we had a termite inspection performed by another company on 1/24/12. The other company's report found and listed more than double the damage than Apple's report, and the inspector verbally noted that there was quite a bit of very obvious damage that Apple's report did not notate. By this point, we decided that the only thing we could do would be to file a complaint with the Structural Pest Control Board of California. We put together a complaint with both inspections, the emails regarding the missed appointments, and the escrow documents describing the problems with the termite repairs, and decided that we would give them one more chance before filing the report. A final attempt to schedule an appointment was made, and the appointment was confirmed by Apple for (today) Friday, 2/17/12. This time, the owner himself promised to personally come to the house and do the repairs himself. Not surprisingly, we received a call at 12:30 in the afternoon letting us know that they were "five minutes away". My husband went to the house to meet them, and they never showed up. He waited at the house for an hour and a half. When I got home from work at 5:45, there was a tag on the door that "Cesar and Charlie" had been to the house at 4:00pm. The owner's name is Jehnsen Lopez. So, not only did the owner not show up, but the workers arrived at the house THREE AND A HALF HOURS after they said they were FIVE MINUTES AWAY. Today, while Apple was supposedly "five minutes away" from my house, I emailed the complaint to Apple in a last ditch effort to get them to right themselves and do right by us. We informed them that we would also be reporting them to the BBB and filing a civil lawsuit against them if we ended up filing the complaint. This FINALLY got a phone call. I spoke with Araceli, who was friendly and apologetic, and agreed that this was in no way acceptable. She asked if they can come to the house (tomorrow) Saturday, 2/18/12, to perform all the work. I told her that Apple has until Monday, 2/20/12, to complete the work outlined in the OTHER, more complete, inspection report. I will update this posting when the weekend is over. Hopefully Apple shows up tomorrow, but I am not counting on it. ***UPDATE 2/20/2012*** Apple FINALLY came to do the work they were supposed to do, much to my surprise. Three guys arrived at 9:00am on Saturday morning, and the apparent "leader" agreed to do all of the work outlined in the inspection report we had done by the other company (described below). They worked until 1pm, then took a 3 AN A HALF HOUR lunch break. They came back around 4:30, worked for another hour and a half, and said they'd have to come back to finish the following weekend because there was no more daylight. Yet again, we were surprised to be awakened by the doorbell at 8:00am today (we had the day off for Presidents day), by two of the workers from Saturday, back to finish the work. They worked until 11:30AM, when they finished all but some damaged hardwood flooring inside both of the upstairs bedrooms. The workers were friendly, I will give them that, but it hardly makes up for what just happened a few minutes ago. I received a phone call at 7:00pm, a few minutes ago, from Apple Termite. A young girl was calling to find out if all of the work was done. I told her all but the upstairs bedrooms had been completed. She put me on hold and a man came on the line asking me to describe what needed to be done in the bedrooms. After I described the worked needed, he said that they do not do cosmetic repairs (which may be true, I don't know), and became quite aggressive. He asked me if the floors needed wood filler, and I said no, they needed entire planks of wood replaced. To this, he replied that they had only received $585 for this job, but they had not even received that yet, and the whole reason he was calling was to collect payment for the job. I was astonished at his audacity and rudeness. Before hanging up on him, I told him that he needed to talk to the sellers, because we were never told that we were supposed to pay them. In fact, it was my understanding that they were paid before escrow closed, following their submission of their completion report dated December 22, 2011. Judging by how desperate they are to collect less than $600, I imagine that they are hard up for cash and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, especially considering that they are defendants in at least one civil lawsuit right now. However, a legitimate company does NOT treat its customers the way this man treated me on the phone tonight. An important detail to point out is that the reason their bill was only $600, rather than the thousand of dollars that it should have been, was due to the NEGLIGENCE of the inspector who wrote up the initial report on the property (before we even saw the house) back in November. As the buyers, we had no reason to believe that we needed a "second opinion" on the seller's termite report, so we took it at face value. Before tonight's phone call, I thought that Apple had made good on their unprofessional, negligent actions. I was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt in hopes that the experience we had with them was an isolated one. However, they have proven that they are exactly that: unprofessional and negligent. I feel bad for anyone who has to deal with this company, although based on the way they conduct their business, I have no doubt that they will be bankrupt and shut down in the next few years anyway.