Yesterday was a frustrating one. Nothing terrible happened, it was just frustrating. The first reason is that it was the day I chose to get together all of our tax information to send to our CPA. It took me about four hours to answer all of the questions on her many page questionnaire, even though I had already put most of the necessary backup information into a file to make it easy for me. But, although the four hours were not fun, they were not five hours, or six.

After I finished that task, I began looking at the mail that had collected while we were away. One was a credit card bill that I had to pay within a few days in order to avoid interest charges. All looked OK, except for one item. There was a charge from Terminix for $1,590.

Huh?

Here’s the story. We have long had a seasonal ant problem, and have relied on hardware store ant traps to catch them. Maybe, we thought, there was a better way. In addition, from time to time we have noticed some mouse droppings, which meant we probably had a pet we hadn’t met. We tried hardware store mouse traps, but our guy was obviously too smart to fall for that old trick.

I saw an ad for Terminix and said to myself “why not?” My memory (and that is all I have to rely on) is that we could get our house (hopefully) fully protected by quarterly visits that would cost us $265 each. And that this service would cover both ants and mice, and that between the quarterly visits, Terminix would come back out on call for specific problems and that these visits would not cost extra. It made sense to us to try this for a year.

They first came in November, set some traps, and when I looked a week or so later, I saw that we actually caught (through some sort of rat poison that wouldn’t hurt people, dogs or cats) a cute little mouse, for whom I had a lot of sympathy. Because we didn’t know if there were more, we called and told them of their success and asked if they could replenish our traps, which they did. Then, one other time, Terminix called and said they were coming out to do some outside spraying, and that we did not have to invite them in for coffee.

After the first visit in November, we paid them $265. I was expecting another $265 in February. And I assumed they would send us a bill, not that they would use our card information to pay for their bill, much less than their bill would be $1,590.

I called Terminix to try to unravel this. When you call Terminix you call an 800 number and get someone somewhere, but not near you. I got Jessica (or maybe Jennifer), and she was very nice. Somebody I would hire. I explained the story, and she seemed to understand it. She started by saying that we must have signed a service contract for a bunch of services that would total $1,590 a quarter. No, I said, no possible. She told me to hold on while she looked further. I did.

She returned and said that she was confused. I told her she couldn’t be more confused than I was, and she thought she and I were confused about the same. She had no answer for me, and told me that she was going to call the local branch office and that I would hear from them next. So far, nothing.

After I spoke with her, I realized that I could set up an on-line account with Terminix, and I did that, thinking that maybe I could learn something more. It showed the $265 from November and the $1,590 from February, and it had a button I could push to see our “service contract” (which I don’t remember seeing or signing). But when you push that button, you get a never ending moving circle; you never get to a service contract. I assume this is what confused Jessica/Jennifer.

Anyway, we are waiting. Then I called the credit card company (Barclay’s) and ask them to put a hold on that payment. That turned out to be an ordeal, too. I was told, at first, that they couldn’t mark it as a dispute unless I could tell them what services the bill was for. Another “huh?” Isn’t that the definition of a dispute – when you see a charge that you don’t think is legitimate. If I had a charge from Macy’s and hadn’t bought anything at Macy’s, how could I have told them what the charge was for? At any rate, it took a while, but we did get it marked as a matter in dispute or, as Barclay’s calls it, a “claim”.

We will see what happens.