Received a note earlier in the week about how the exterminators were going to come into our apartments today for their twice-yearly inspection. Fine and dandy. I’m used to various inspections of my residence. But at other apartments in which I’ve lived, someone from the rental office would always accompany the person, like during fire code inspections to grant them access to each residence.
Today, I get a knock at the door and it’s the Orkin man. Nobody from the rental office is with him and he’s holding a giant Ziploc bag of keys to all of the apartments in the building. What the fuck? Someone who comes by only twice a year is given unsupervised access to every apartment in the building?
Now there was nothing unusual or odd about the guy. In fact, he acted quite professionally. Still, I couldn’t help but think the worst. It was around noon-ish. Most people here are at work at that time. Was there really anything stopping him from from pausing to leisurely admire a female’s dwelling and saying to himself, “Ooo, I like this one. I might have to go to the hardware store a block away and make a duplicate key for later.”?
Makes me wonder that if the exterminators are given free access to my apartment, who else with only a tenuous connection to the rental office is being given these kinds of privileges without my knowledge?
So am I out of line on thinking this way or do I have a legitimate gripe?
Legitimate gripe. Just because an exerminator works for a large company doesn’t make him automatically safe. As far as I can see, Orkin doesn’t even do the “bonded and insured” that you’d get with most small contractors.
If the apartment management is going to require access to your home, then they need to be responsible for granting access properly. I’d bet real money that if the Orkin Man did something to your stuff, management would claim no liability because it wasn’t their employee.
An Orkin Man cased my sister’s house during his visit and returned later to rob her. When he was arrested, he had a couple rooms full of stuff that he’d ripped off from customers.
I’d complain. Politely and calmly - it may not have occurred to them that this was a problem. Escalate as needed if they blow you off.
I work in rental property management in New Jersey. We have access to go into an apartment for an emergency only. Even so, we always have someone from our office go in with any outside person, especially if the tenant is not home.
I rent an apartment. I’d complain to the office. I expect maintenance and office staff to be able to get into my apartment. The conditions under which they can enter are spelled out in my lease. I also trust them not to steal from me. An exterminator with no connection to the building owners should not be entering apartments without being accompanied by staff from the office, or one of the regular maintenance workers.
My husband owns a handyman company, and I cannot imagine any circumstance in which he would enter a private residence without the presence of a law enforcement officer, a locksmith, or some agent of the property management company. Even then, he makes a point to leave his business card and a note to let the resident know who was there, and why. His reasoning is, he can’t be accused of anything (“Oh, I left $2000 on my dresser and now it’s missing!”), and there’s also a witness to any damage that he’s repairing or any dead bodies that he might find. (He works in some pretty skeevy complexes sometimes. He hasn’t yet found a dead body, but it wouldn’t really surprise me if he did.)