Poor management seems to be improving
This review is specific to a tech named Lorenzo. If it were about him, it would be five stars. However, as it is about Natran, I must go to three stars. Had it been a couple of years ago, it would be zero stars.
I have not had good experiences with Natran over the many years we have been a customer. Being they are the only company even close to natural in town, we are a captive audience. Years of problems with techs coming and sitting on their phones, not inspecting termite bait stations while we were under annual contract, resulting in termite damage while the house while it was supposedly being monitored by their bait stations, and we were paying many thousands for a service very poorly managed. I watched them through the windows as they pretended to do their job, then signed off on the inspection paper, and left. They didn't map our termite stations for years until we forced them to. So many stations went undisturbed and covered in leaves and many inches of dirt because nobody knew where they were installed. Countless calls and complaints went poorly answered until we had to make threats, which is not like us. I watched as Sebastian came after many complaints we made and opened a bait station that hadn't been Inspected for a long time, just to find it crawling with termites, which had migrated into our house and destroyed the entryway to our home. I overheard him saying to someone on the phone, "it looks like no-one has opened these for a long time", which I had been complaining about every time their inspections were listed as having been done. I had been emailing and calling saying "the stations are undisturbed. Nobody even found or opened them. Where is the map of where they all are?". The response was "we don't have a map". Anyone on a termite bait station contract should reasonably expect that the company who installed them could actually find them to inspect them, and actually open them once they do. But this took years of complaints and meetings with their management to get anyone to actually care.
The only two techs who have ever actually cared about their jobs at Natran are Lorenzo and Sebastian. They even have a manager who comes to service stations dressed like a corporate executive. I mean, really? This is a pest control company, not a fortune 500. He can't even bend the knee onto dirt to inspect dressed like that.
We purchased a rodent plan and they did it as a "one and done", refusing to come back and help keep the rat population out of our hot tub (and attic where they were eating wires) because it wasn't "attached to the house". They suggested that I load it with moth balls (didn't work and made the hot tub unusable due to the smell). They didn't want to help even though we paid for their services. Again, it took multiple complaints to get someone to actually care.
We hired them to keep our beloved dogs safe from poisons while keeping major damaging pests out, and have been on contract for probably ten years. We are willing to tolerate a lot to keep them safe, including using manual methods rather than poisons that may harm our pets. But you want me to empty dead, decomposing rats out of traps in my attic when I paid Natran for this service?
Natran is notorious for making appointments and then not showing up, with no call to postpone. This means my dogs sit in crates all day when they could be outside sunning and running zoomies. They did it again to us last week. Gave us a morning appt and never called or showed up. On the reschedule, Lorenzo was here to do a full annual inspection, which takes hours to do right. He showed up the second time, earlier than he was supposed to, so I was still in my PJs. When he finally finished his excellent service and listened carefully to our needs, it was after lunchtime. I asked him how many more inspections he had, expecting him to say one or two. The answer was an astounding EIGHT! No wonder they don't show up as scheduled.
Lorenzo and Sebastian both deserve a raise and should be held as models for others to aspire to. They both develop relationships with customers like us and actually listen to what we need rather than constantly saying no and trying to sell us poisons.
We have never left a review before for Natran, because we don't like to leave negative ones. We were asked to write this one, so it needs to be truthful. We hope that next time we are asked to write a review, we can give Natran five stars. They seem to be hiring better techs now.