The idea of tiny blood sucking insects in your bed has been terrifying children for decades but bedbugs can really ruin not only a good nights sleep but also your sanity. I know; I’ve been there.
A few years ago, while living in Vancouver, my whole neighborhood had bed bugs. I only ever had two bites, but the thought of them living in my house, in my bed, consumed my mind for weeks while we attempted to get our landlord to help us solve the problem. My roommate’s legs were covered in bites and we all were constantly swatting our skin at imaginary crawlers.
Eventually, after sleepless nights and the endless harassment of a deadbeat landlord, I gave up. I threw out my bed and moved into a new apartment. I will never forget taking my mattress out to the alley way and looking at the rows of mattresses lining the lane. My neighborhood was infested!
The phenomenon is fairly new here. I read more and more reviews about pest control companies clearing out bed bugs in homes and apartments.
It seems to be a growing issue in North America where the problem once was under control. In the 50’s DDT was used to squash these bugs for good but since DDT has now been banned, these pests are now more difficult to control.
Bedbugs are really good at hiding. Although the insects are visible, they may be difficult to get a look at. You will know if you’ve spotted one if you see a small reddish brown oval insect. If you are waking up with red itchy welts and suspect you might have an infestation, other signs include the upsetting dark spots or streaks they can leave on your mattress. They can also leave their shed skins and eggs inside your box spring, mattress, and sheets.
Waheed from Pesticon explained that bed bug activity is typically between the hours of 5 and 7 am when you are sure to be asleep and after the bed bug bites, it secretes a saliva that ensures you don’t wake up and catch it in the act. Both Waheed and Kevin agree that if you suspect you have bed bugs wash all of your sheets and linens and dry them on high for at least 40 minutes. Kevin also suggests vacuuming your mattress and box spring and all their cracks and crevices regularly as well as clearing clutter from closets and nightstands. Bed bugs are not always easy to eradicate yourself so if you are still getting bites, you will need to call a professional for help.
When any pest control company visits a house, chemicals are used in treatment. All pest control companies in Canada use chemicals that are regulated by registered with the PMRA (Pest management Regulatory Agency) and are completely safe for humans so long as homeowners follow the preparation and after treatment ventilation instructions. Chemicals are used in the cracks and crevices of things like electrical switches, picture frames, baseboards, mattresses and box springs. Waheed mentioned he also uses hot steam on other items like clothes hanging in closets.
Prevention of bed bugs can be difficult since they can live in clothing and be transferred anywhere people congregate. A lot of bed bugs are transferred through travel on suitcases where they love to live. If you are traveling or even moving into a new rental property, it’s a good idea to check out the National Bed Bug Registry, the free public database for bed bug encounters. Try and keep your suitcases in the garage or away from your house when you return home and be sure to wash all of your clothes dirty or not.
Living with bedbugs can really affect your sleep and state of mind. It’s best to deal with the infestation as soon as possible so you can get back to having a good night sleep and get on with your life normally. Check out our Pest & Animal Control category to find a reliable pest control company in your area.
We receive a lot of reviews about decks and patios this time of year. Some reviewers describe great jobs and send in photos to match. Photos so good we wish weren’t sitting in an office looking at them.
So instead of stewing in our chairs about the perils of being indoors this time of year, we thought we’d take the opportunity to share some of the great outdoor spaces created by contractors and homeowners on our site.
This beautiful space was built off of Lillian in T.O.’s home by Master Deck and Contracting. Lillian says she had to wait awhile for Master Deck to have availability, but that it was totally worth the wait considering the fantastic results given her permit restrictions. They even built a privacy wall to make this a real sanctuary… and so she doesn’t have to look at her neighbors (heh heh). This looks like great spot for relaxing Lillian, hope you’ve had some time to really enjoy it.
Kevin in Toronto wrote in to sing the praises of his deck contractor Falco Landscape Design. We love a before and after shot and this one is no exception. They’ve really created a lot of privacy where there wasn’t much before and Kevin says the backyard now gets use everyday.
I love this space. I have a pear tree (whose fruit is inedible) and a picnic table in my backyard, Halo in Laurelwood has a backyard that looks better than most provincial parks! This space was created by Roger at Pond’s & Patio’s. Roger installed a waterfall feature and also has been a great source of information for Halo’s koi ponds.
Dimo in Pickering had this inviting space added to the back of his house with a little help from The Franmac Group. Frank from Franmac went above and beyond, building a bench and gate for this project which Dimo was very pleased with. Loving this nighttime shot; hope you’ve enjoyed some great summer evenings with friends this summer Dimo!
There’s still time to update your deck or patio this season so be sure to check out our Patios & Decks category for your area. Lots of people build their own decks, or may try to, but professional jobs can really make a big difference to your outdoor living space. Check out more tips for finding the best decking company for your backyard here in Allen Britnell’s article in the Subury Star.
If you’ve hired someone already and have not yet written a review for them please do! And please add photos, it keeps us inspired (and a little jealous)!
Over the holidays a moving company in Vancouver wrote in their blog about the Death of the Testimonial. While Google would take exception to that, having, allegedly, put in an offer for Yelp for $500M, the point that the moving company seems to have issue with is that, encouraged by our ‘overcaffinated sales rep’, old testimonials were appearing on his competitors pages.
But what’s wrong with an old testimonial? We’ve discussed in this blog about how when a testimonial is 10-15 years old, it not much use to a consumer, but the ones he’s referring to are maybe months old. As a user and reader, I do care how a company has done a few months ago. Even up to a year ago, especially if it’s with the same company management.
As users of HomeStars know, we are adamant about making sure the reviews are real reflections of homeowners experiences. If a company can find an old testimonial (but not too old) they can ask the person who wrote the testimonial to put it up on HomeStars. It does reflect the work of the company, and it’s important to a homeowner to know about the experience.
Perhaps the point he’s making is questioning whether it’s okay to ask a customer for a testimonial. We think it is. There’s no shame in asking for a referral or a testimonial. In the world of social media, I’ll judge people on their interactions with other people, and if companies interact well with their consumers, (and also respond to their reviews) those are the companies I want to do business with.
On the point of transparency, we try and be as transparent as we can be at HomeStars. Reviewers mostly opt to be anonymous, which we allow them to do, but many of them give their full names and addresses. We do our best to make sure that the reviews are real on our end. In our upcoming releases we’ll be allowing communication between homeowners through the site. So if you want to ask further details about a job or reviewer, that option will be available. It’s all part of opening up transparency, one of our mandates.
He’s right by saying readers should be skeptical of reviews. Of course they should. But volume counts. A company like Emerald Moving in Toronto now has over 90 reviews, and in his market, Vancouver, Rain City Moving has over 18. That’s some amount of testimonials, and likely to be real, or real enough for users.
So go ahead. Find some customers from last year. Ask them to write a testimonial for your company? You can even ask them to be transparent about the date of the job. It all helps other homeowners find the best companies to hire for their next move or home renovation.
Feel free to comment your thoughts. (City Move Blog doesn’t allow comments.., alas)
Last week I was on vacation in South Carolina and spent the first couple days reading a great book by Tara Hunt called The Whuffie Factor. You’re probably asking: what’s whuffie? It’s actually a term I don’t really like, but it’s used to describe “social capital”. Specifically, it’s the influence you have, as a person or a company, on the people around you to either help you or buy your products or services. It essentially comes down to trust. People want to buy from, work with and help out those who they like and they have relationships with. Makes sense, huh?
In the online world marketing has changed the playing field for advertising. Sites like HomeStars allow users to go and review their home improvement specialists and contractors. Yes, your customers can talk back! We don’t really provide an advertising medium here at HomeStars (although it’s the product we sell), but instead a platform for contractors to communicate with their clientelle. They can portray their company with pictures, lots of text, but the real content that users of the site want to read are the reviews.
Lets look at some of Tara Hunt’s tenents for building this ‘social capital’ and apply them to the businesses on our site: home improvement specialists and contractors. These our our clients, and our community, as well as the homeowners that read and write their reviews. These are the people that really create the content on our site which is valuable to them.
The first rule of ‘Whuffie’ is to turn the bullhorn around and start listening. For contractors this means really listening to their clients. Many of them do this every day as they have personal relationships with many of their clients anyway. Most home improvement companies listen just because of the nature of their business – they are small companies that deal directly with the clients. But when they don’t, it can end up hurting them. Bad reviews, bad ratings and bad reputation can hurt a company immensly. On the other hand, good feedback makes a company better. Derek Morland from Mr Rooter GTA explains here.
Another rule is to listen and integrate feedback. People who take the time to review you, whether bad or good, want to know you’re listening. The HomeStars site will sent out an email to the reviewer letting them know that the company has responded to a review on the site. One excellent example is Carson Dunlop, a home inspection and eco-inspection company. If you look through their listing and reviews, they take the time thank their customers for taking the time to write a review. Another great example is Direct Energy who, despite some rough reviews, is taking the time to answer each one, take the feedback and solve the issues raised. Direct Energy is a much bigger company, so fixing customers service issues can be a challenge, but taking the time to thank those who reviewed you is important – not enough companies on our site take the time.
Importantly, you should be real and be yourself. It really helps. Brent Jefferies, of Classic Home Inspections, told me at one of our recent meetup events, that he is incredibly busy because of the site. He often refers jobs to his competitors (something that builds local Whuffie with his peers – again suggested!) but clients want him and him only. By the time they’ve read almost 90 reviews of Brent’s inspections, they know him pretty well before he even arrives at their house! Talk about building trust!
We try and embrace these ideas at HomeStars and even set up our own page where companies and users can write reviews about us. It helps keep us honest, open and builds trust among our homeowner users and our listed companies. We have a forum, a facebook page, a twitter account, and even just email to get in touch with us. As we continue to say: give us feedback! It helps us grow.
Last Sunday and yesterday I had the privilege to spend a couple days with some Mr. Rooter franchisees who were attending the Canadian National Meeting as a vendor – courtesy of Sue Halford who tireless organized the great event. My goal was to introduce HomeStars, and start a process to educate this great franchise of the power of social media, SEO, and consumer feedback – and, of course, to sign up new listings. As a result, I met many of the great Mr. Rooter franchisees across the country – learning a great deal about the challenges they face going forward, and the details of the plumbing business in general.
After my arrival in St John’s (sharing a taxi with Bill from the recently opened Sault Ste. Marie franchise), Sunday afternoon we headed up to Signal Hill where a Parks Canada tour guide taught the group the history and beauty of the monument – it’s importance to both military and trade in the region. A fewofus walked down to the town right along the entrance to the harbour admiring the absolutely stunning scenery.
After a vendor introduction reception we headed out to dinner, then for some entertainment at Shamrock City – one of the many drinking and music venues in downtown St. Johns. A great duet played that night and spent time with Kim from the Barrie franchise and Alan from London and of course the infamous Derek Moreland, a long time supporter of HomeStars, and largest Mr. Rooter franchisee.
The next day I had the chance to introduce myself and HomeStars to John from Calgary, Dino from Winnipeg, Troy from Regina as well as others.
We headed out to The Majestic where Sue had organized a great meal (thanks to the great staff there!) and awarded prizes for achievement. Among the winners were Steve and Patrick, from Mr. Rooter Vancouver for greatest sales gain. I learned a bit about another vendor, Woolsley, met a local Mr. Electric franchisee (another Dwyer Group company), the Fredericton franchisee, Mark, as well as the local St. John’s Franchisee, Matt.
This group was not done with Shamrock City, where we had been the night before. By the end of the night Derek was up on stage singing with the band. (apologies for no video!)
A great thanks to Sue, Khya and the Dwyer group folks for the invitation and hospitality.
If you are in any of these areas, and are looking for some quality plumbers, I can tell you these guys care about and love their work – real professionals. Look them up on HomeStars, and don’t forget to write them a review!
Since HomeStars was launched in 2006 we’ve received a lot of feedback – good and bad – about the site, and the service it provides. We obviously love to hear praise, but it’s also important we hear how we can improve. We’ve received emails and added some of them here, taken surveys, (click here to take our survey), and even brought out our camera to capture some videos of what people think.
But just recently we added a some new tools to help us stay close to our constituents. Now people can not write a review on us. So far the reviews are all good but we know there will be people not happy with our service. And we need to take the heat too.
We also added a Questions & Suggestions section to our forum so people can post their ideas, and also comment on others. We’ve had quite a few suggestions already, several around improving the photo gallery.
We hope to hear from you anytime. Of course when you write a review, enter our $500 draw at Best Buy in Canada or the US - which closes in 34 days
We always like when people say nice things about us. In the last couple days we had some nice incoming emails as well as got some customer testimonials we wanted to share with you.
We are very excited to work with your organization and appreciate very much
all your combined efforts.
It can only help both the consumer as well as the trade in their various
categories.
I hope and expect that Home Stars will become an household name along with D&B and the BBB.
Keep up the good work,
just wanted to thank you for running this service. It’s a fantastic idea, and so far, has provided me with three exceptional home reno experiences, after years of not so good ones.
I have had a lot of compliments on my kitchen and dining room over the past few years. We renovated the kitchen in 1998 – wow is it that long ago – and then followed up around 2002 with built-ins in the dining room. Now when the topic comes up, I think about the man and the company that built our cabinetry. As one of the reviewers on our site states, “Izhak stands for excellence”. But a series of unfortunate events caused Izhak Shimon and his partner Gad Sabbah to close down Millennium Kitchens.
I first met Izhak through my friend Hildi, a designer who worked with him and many companies over the years. She said he’s extremely busy but the quality of his workmanship is worth waiting for. And it was. He came to measure all the cabinets he built for us, and was very thorough. There were never any errors and he’d also come back if we had any tweaks after the job was complete. He did the same for my parent’s kitchen and bathrooms. Izhak was doing so well, I remember him telling me he was starting to get large jobs in the U.S. Our dollar was low so it made sense that Canadian cabinet makers and kitchen companies would benefit from making their products available south of the border.
But the business down there obviously became more difficult as the sub-prime crisis hit real estate last spring and people realized they couldn’t buy, renovate and flip anymore as house prices dropped precipitously.
Millennium I’m told had a large order for a 20,000 square foot home in Georgia - cabinets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The owner of the home went bankrupt, and did not make the payments on the cabinets Izhak and his company had shipped. Well that was a big strain on their cash flow. So they stepped back and realized they would have to write off the loss. It wasn’t going to be easy but they decided that they’d scale back their operation in the meantime and find a smaller workshop. So they packed up their equipment into a storage container and stored it while they looked at relocating.
That was back in August 2008. Some of you may recall there was a large explosion at a Propane station called Sunrise. Many of us that lived within a 10 mile radius of the station heard the explosion – and some people opened their curtains to see the fire and smoke light up the early morning sky. The damage in the vicinity was devastating. What does this have to do with Millennium Kitchens? Well – their storage container with all the equipment was located close to the fire. Everything was destroyed.
I can’t help but think with Izhak Shimon’s talent, and his partner Gad that one day they will be back. So we’ve left the listing up for Millennium Kitchens. Just in case. It’s a great company I hope will be making beautiful kitchens for many of our Toronto readers in the future.
We had an interesting note from a client a few weeks ago, which I think is worth discussing. He had purchased a home services company and had a series of not-so-good reviews on HomeStars. He asked us to remove them because he said that they were the fault of the previous owner. He makes an interesting point, but the reality is corporate reputation is actually what you buy when you purchase a company. The reviews of past customers are the legacy you are purchasing when you buy an enterprise, and it’s then your job to change course, acquire new reviews – really a new reputation – which eclipses the old, poor performance of your predecessor.
Leslie Carothers writes for Furniture World magazine and makes some very good points our customers should be aware of. We also suggest setting up a Google News Alert with your company name, so you can see when you’ve been mentioned in the press or by another blogger or customers.
We harp on this point here at HomeStars, but it’s worth making again. The more you get your happy customers to write reviews – and you know you have lots of them – the less impact the negative ones will have on your reputation online.
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The idea of tiny blood sucking insects in your bed has been terrifying children for decades but bedbugs can really ruin not only a good nights sleep but also your sanity. I know; I’ve been there.
Waheed from Pesticon explained that bed bug activity is typically between the hours of 5 and 7 am when you are sure to be asleep and after the bed bug bites, it secretes a saliva that ensures you don’t wake up and catch it in the act. Both Waheed and Kevin agree that if you suspect you have bed bugs wash all of your sheets and linens and dry them on high for at least 40 minutes. Kevin also suggests vacuuming your mattress and box spring and all their cracks and crevices regularly as well as clearing clutter from closets and nightstands. Bed bugs are not always easy to eradicate yourself so if you are still getting bites, you will need to call a professional for help.
Living with bedbugs can really affect your sleep and state of mind. It’s best to deal with the infestation as soon as possible so you can get back to having a good night sleep and get on with your life normally. Check out our Pest & Animal Control category to find a reliable pest control company in your area.
Last week I was on vacation in South Carolina and spent the first couple days reading a great book by Tara Hunt called
walked down to the town right along the entrance to the harbour admiring the absolutely stunning scenery.
