Every summer, sales crews work Phoenix-area neighborhoods door to door, and every fall we hear from homeowners stuck in contracts they did not understand, paying for pests that were never covered. None of that requires a villain — just fine print and a homeowner who did not know what to ask.
So here is the list. We wrote it expecting to be asked these same eight questions ourselves, and that is the standard worth holding any company to: a good operator answers all eight without flinching, in writing, before you sign anything.
1. Are you licensed — and can I verify it?
Pest control businesses and applicators in Arizona are licensed by the Pest Management Division (PMD) of the Arizona Department of Agriculture, which absorbed the old Office of Pest Management (OPM) — you will still hear both names. Every legitimate company has a business license and a qualifying party, and every tech applying product needs an applicator certification.
Verify it yourself: the Department of Agriculture's website has a public license lookup where you can search the company name before anyone treats your home. An unlicensed operator usually means no liability insurance, no training requirements, and no recourse if something is misapplied around your kids or pets. If a salesperson cannot produce a license number on the spot, the conversation is over.
2–3. Get the guarantee and the contract terms in writing
Question two: what happens if pests come back between visits? The honest industry answer is a free re-service — a tech returns and retreats at no charge. If the guarantee lives only in the salesperson's mouth and not in the service agreement, it does not exist. Get the exact terms on paper.
Question three: how long is the contract, and what does it cost to leave? This is where homeowners get hurt most. The red flag is a 24-month agreement with a cancellation fee around $200, sold on a discounted first visit. Reasonable companies offer month-to-month service or an easy exit, because they expect to keep you with results, not penalties.
4–5. What is excluded — and do scorpions cost extra?
Question four: which pests are excluded from the base plan? Read this section of any agreement twice. "General pest control" commonly excludes termites, bed bugs, rodents — and sometimes the very pest you called about. Exclusions are normal and legitimate; hiding them until the first denied re-service is not.
Question five is the Arizona-specific one: are scorpions covered, and do they cost extra? Scorpions are the number one pest call in the East Valley, yet some plans treat them as an add-on. Scorpion work legitimately costs more — direct-contact treatment, harborage work, and night inspections rather than a simple perimeter spray — but the surcharge should be quoted up front, not discovered later.
6–8. Who shows up, what it costs, and the re-service policy
Question six: who actually performs the service — a company employee or a subcontractor? Either can work, but you deserve to know who is walking your property, what training they carry, and whether they were background-checked. Companies proud of their techs answer this instantly.
Question seven: is pricing published anywhere, or is every quote a mystery? When a company will not put a starting price on its own website, the number tends to float toward whatever the salesperson thinks a doorstep will bear. Published pricing disciplines everyone — it is why our plans start at $35 a month and say so publicly.
Question eight: spell out the re-service policy. Is it free, how fast do they come, and is there a cap on how often you can call? A company confident in its work puts no asterisk on this. A company that hesitates is telling you what the guarantee is really worth.
What a fair deal looks like
Put together, the picture is simple: a license you verified, a written guarantee with free re-service, no long lock-in or exit penalty, scorpions explicitly covered, a real person on your property whose employer you know, and a price you saw before anyone rang your doorbell.
Most established Valley companies clear that bar. The point of the eight questions is not paranoia — the few who fail them tend to fail several at once, and ten minutes of asking saves you a two-year contract's worth of regret.