It’s another episode of the Harpoon Pest Solutions Pest Control Podcast with your host Mike Stewart and the pest expert Quincy Jones at harpoonpestsolutions.com. Now, today’s question is very relevant to today, where this is May of 2020. We’re hopefully on the downside of the coronavirus, COVID-19 pandemic. And one of the biggest concerns of homeowners, really all over the world, but especially in the Philadelphia area where Quincy works, is that pest control is an essential service. It has been the whole time and it will continue to be, and it’s actually being more of an essential service because of the increase of all kinds of pests and vermin that are attacking people’s homes out of survival. And then more importantly, people are home and they’re seeing problems that that maybe they’ve ignored for quite some time.

So when you need pest services, Quincy, how effective and how safe is just doing external pest control? Because I know folks really are nervous about having anyone come in their home for fear of the COVID-19. Can you effectively take care of my home and can you safely take care of my home from the outside or from exterior pest service?

Right. So that is exactly what we’ve been able to do. To my surprise, and I’m kind of a old school pest control guy. I’ve always been … from the very beginning learn how to come inside and attack problems where they are. But what I’ve learned through this crisis is that exterior pest control service is very effective. It’s highly effective. There have been several of our customers who have requested service, even some new customers that have requested service. And because of the current pandemic, we’ve limited the amount of homes that we actually go inside. So we’ll only go inside if there’s an extreme need to go inside. So everything else we’ve been doing from the outside with some fabulous products that we’ve been using. And to my surprise, the results have been outstanding.

So we’ve been getting calls for everything from … a lot of ant calls this time of year, ants, bees, and even rodents. But to be able to effectively and safely use certain products around the exterior of a home, and then for two weeks or so to pass and then to have feedback from customers to tell us their results, it’s been extremely satisfying to know that we can actually give a full service to a customer for most all our house general household pests and see satisfying results. So it’s been working out for us.

Well, it’s sad that it took a pandemic, but now you discovered that you can effectively take care of a person’s home and get results and not have to go inside. But let’s say there’s a situation today that you have to go inside. What precautions do you and your techs take to protect the homeowner’s health and protect your own health if you did have to go inside? Are you going inside even though we’ve proven that it’s effective that you don’t have to in most cases?

Good question. So yes, we are going inside because there are some situations where you just have to go inside and address the problem. And we’ve had some of those issues come up where we just had to go inside. So what we’ve been doing is this. We’ve been making the customer aware of the steps that we’re taking specifically. We’ve been telling them exactly what to expect when our technician arrives. We take the initiative first and foremost to protect ourselves, and that means wearing a N95 mask and making sure that we have our hands covered with gloves and appropriate coverings on our feet. And we’ve also taken steps to make sure that our equipment and our tools are being sanitized between each visit. Those are the steps that we’re taking before we enter inside of a home.

Now,