Consistently Irresponsible Landlord

Almost two years ago, my current room mate had experienced bed bugs at her old place.  Professional exterminators preformed a treatment, but she was unaware that they typically do a follow up, and she was actually moving to our current apartment the next week. About a month after moving in, she was bitten by bed bugs here at the place we live now. Straight away she called our land lord to report the news. She honestly explained that she may have brought them here from her previous apt even though she believed she had gotten rid of them. She also explained to our land lord that the only sure way of getting rid of them, is to work with professional pest control people. Our land lord did not heed her advice, and sent her regular maintenance men to come by and spray her room. For the next two months, she was bug bite free. However, the bed bugs returned, and another call was made. Again, after asking for professional help, our land lord opted to send her maintenance men again to spray. This same cycle of spraying, bugs returning, calling, asking for professionals, spraying done by maintenance men, happened over and over again for the next YEAR AND A HALF!

Then, the problem got worse. I, myself, began being bitten at night. The bugs had spread to my room. After talking with other tenants in the building, we discovered that the bugs had spread to them as well! Now, we really had a situation at hand that only professional pest control could handle. Yet, again, our land lord opted to send her maintenance men to do an unsuccessful job at spraying all of our rooms. Of course, the bugs kept returning, and eventually, months later, our land lord scheduled for Terminex to come to the building!

Terminex did an initial treatment, which involved using special chemicals that actually draw the bugs out of hiding and another chemical that prevents them from laying eggs. Terminex advised our land lord that they needed to do another treatment in two weeks time incase there were eggs anywhere already that could hatch. It was the land lord’s responsibility to schedule that second treatment. She never did. And guess what? I was getting bit again two weeks after Terminex came! And I found baby bed bugs! Calls to land lord were made again, she finally brought Terminex out again. And a couple weeks after that, he did another treatment. So…. a week or so passed by, and surprisingly I had a couple bites. This problem seems so close to being solved! I had the land lord call Terminex  to see what our next steps should be. Terminex was baffled why I was still having a bite here and there, so he wanted to come by again real soon. Instead, land lord decided to take matters into her own hands, and bug bomb our bedrooms. Since she had never informed Terminex she was doing this, I called Terminex to inquire about bug bombing. They told me that bug bombing is not the best solution for bed bugs, that it just makes the bugs burrow deeper into their hiding spots and they’ll eventually come out again. This is where I am now. Surely, they will return.

At this point, I am extremely furious with this whole situation and how long it has been since my room mate initially was bitten. Our land lord waited a year and a half to finally get professional pest control. In that year and half, she let the bugs spawn many generations that spread to other tenants. And now, it seemed we were so close to solving the problem professionally, yet she is back to choosing cheaper, ineffective solutions. This whole bed bug fiasco is just the main problem. There’s also the fact that she is extremely  hard to get a hold of. 90% of the time I get her voicemail, and she rarely calls back. There’s also only two sets of washer/dryers in the building, and one set has been broken for several weeks. 

This is just absurd! What should my next step be for WHEN (not if) I get bitten again? Do I contact a lawyer? Should I contact the BBB? Will filing a complaint on this site really mean something? I don’t have any money, and cannot afford legal action fees. I’ve never had to deal with anything like this before and am very uncertain what I should do next. 

Help!

– Ichin’ Mad,

MandyZ