Latest news with #bedbugs
CBS News
5 days ago
- Health
- CBS News
Boston renter says mice, bed bug problem has gotten worse, warns against used furniture
Boston's rodent and bed bug problem may be getting worse. A man who rents on Mission Hill says his landlord has been trying to get rid of the pests for months, and he's not alone. Fritz, who wanted to remain anonymous, said he's been experiencing bed bugs and mice at his apartment on Hillside Street on Mission Hill. He's been living there for almost a year. He started noticing mice in the building about six months ago. "We've been seeing four or five that we've caught then we've put everything in jars that mice can't get to, but we are still seeing mice," Fritz said. "Then we also had an incident with bed bugs." Fritz said after multiple exterminator visits, the problem is not going away in their unit. "There were droppings all over the pantry, a little bit on the floor," Fritz said. "It also just made it kind of gross to go cook in the kitchen when there may be mice droppings. We would clean it up and then a couple days later they obviously came back. Just makes it really tough." "We understand that neighborhoods with high rates of tenant turnover are particularly vulnerable to bed bug infestations-especially when used furniture is brought into homes or when residents attempt do-it-yourself treatments," Boston Inspectional Services said. "We strongly encourage anyone experiencing an infestation to immediately notify their landlord so that prompt and proper treatment can begin." Which is something Fritz has done on multiple occasions. "I think the message the landlord is sending is that he's doing everything he can. But from our perspective every day we are still seeing mice and bed bugs," Fritz said. "Makes it tough to stay there especially with the high rent prices." He also says he's been spending less time at his apartment because the issue hasn't been resolved. "I have heard that it's gotten worse," Fritz said. "I did speak with Terminix, and they said that they've seen an uptick in especially the Boston area, specifically with college students." Fritz, who just graduated college last year, warns college students who are getting ready to move back into their apartments soon to avoid used furniture. "It may seem like a good deal, a $50 couch but definitely worth it to just go and buy a new one in my opinion," Fritz said. "Or if you are getting used furniture, definitely make sure you are at least checking it, making sure there are no bed bugs on it, because you will be paying a lot more in exterminator fees than you will be in just buying the new property."
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Woman Faces Dilemma After Son and Mother-in-Law Suffer Over 80 Bug Bites at High-End Resort
A Mumsnet user chronicled her family's vacation horror story involving more than 80 bites from bed bugs Wondering what to do next, she asked the forum, 'Am I being unreasonable to request a full refund from the resort as we have had a really horrifying experience?' The majority of users agreed she should push for a full refundA 'horrifying experience' is bugging a woman whose son and mother-in-law suffered bug bites during their family vacation at a high-end resort. The woman chronicled the vacation horror story on the community forum Mumsnet, where she asked people how she should handle the situation. 'Me, my partner, son and mother-in-law (MIL) have paid a huge amount to stay in a resort,' she explained. 'After the first night, MIL had what we thought to be mosquito bites all over her arms and chest. They were blistering and weeping. The doctor gave her an injection antihistamine and directed us to stay in our room for 72 hours.' 'The next morning, MIL woke up with over 80 bites over her body, face, back and hands,' she added. 'The doctor confirmed it was bed bugs.' The doctor told the mother-in-law to stay inside for 72 hours. 'The resort moved MIL to another room, meaning that 5 days of our holiday we have all been cooped up in a room, and me and my partner have been taking turns in taking little one to the pool,' she wrote. 'Now we have found bites on our 2-year-old,' she continued. 'We're not sure what to do. MIL is emotionally distressed and it's so bad. The bites are so swollen, and some have even popped so badly that her skin is raw.' Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. Wondering what to do next, she asked the Mumsnet forum, 'Am I being unreasonable to request a full refund from the resort as we have had a really horrifying experience?' In a poll under her post, 98% of the nearly 2,000 voters chose the 'You are NOT being unreasonable' voting option. 'Contact your travel company/agent/rep NOW,' one reader replied. 'Take photos and keep notes of everything. Get a written note from the doctor. This won't get resolved now, but the more you do in real time the less wriggle room the company will have.' Another recommended that she 'push for a full refund + compensation.' Read the original article on People
Associated Press
30-06-2025
- Associated Press
Chicago Tops Orkin's 2025 Bed Bug Cities List Again as Unexpected Cities Climb the Ranks
Newcomers like Hartford and Peoria shake up this year's list as travel season threatens to spread infestations ATLANTA, June 30, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Hartford, Connecticut made the biggest leap in Orkin's 2025 Top 50 Bed Bug Cities List, debuting at No. 35 after jumping an unprecedented 48 spots – indicating a significant increase in bed bug activity. In contrast, Charlotte (no. 31), Philadelphia (no. 24) and New York (no. 15) all saw significant drops, suggesting fewer reported bed bug infestations compared to the previous year. However, one thing hasn't changed: for the fifth consecutive year, Chicago holds onto its spot as the most bed bug-infested city in the nation. For more than 20,000 years, bed bugs have mastered the art of going unnoticed until it's too late. With travel-heavy months ahead, vigilance is key. Knowing how to inspect hotel rooms and luggage could mean the difference between a relaxing vacation and an itchy return home. This year's rankings are based on treatment data from metro areas where Orkin performed the most bed bug treatments from May 15, 2024 – May 14, 2025. The list includes both residential bed bug control and commercial bed bug treatments. 'Bed bugs are some of the most resilient pests in the world, making them extremely difficult to control if brought into a home or hotel,' said Ben Hottel, Orkin entomologist. 'As summer travel picks up, it is critical that people know the best ways to identify, prevent and control these pests.' Cities like Charlotte, Philadelphia and New York made significant improvements in their fight against bed bugs by taking preventative measures against this pest. These major changes in ranking prove the importance of inspecting beds and luggage for bed bugs during and after travel. Know before you go: Bed bug prevention tips Measuring only 3/16 inch long and mostly nocturnal, bed bugs are difficult to detect. These pests are hematophagous, which means blood is their only food source and their favorite supplier happens to be sleeping humans. Clinging to items such as luggage, purses and other personal belongings, bed bugs can travel from place to place with ease. Orkin recommends the following steps to help prevent travelers from bringing bed bugs home in 2025. During travel, remember the acronym S.L.E.E.P. to inspect for bed bugs: 'What makes bed bugs especially challenging is their growing resistance to certain treatments, which is why early detection and proactive prevention are so critical,' said Hottel. 'If there's any sign of bed bugs, it's important to involve a trained professional, like the Pros at Orkin, right away.' With nearly 125 years of experience with bed bugs and state-of-the-art tools and products, Orkin is well-equipped to assess your bed bug problem, offer training for short-staffed hospitality teams and mount a strategic response to help rid your home or business of the pest and provide maximum protection. For more information about bed bug prevention and bed bug control, visit About Orkin, LLC Founded in 1901, Atlanta-based Orkin is an industry leader in essential pest control services and protection against termite damage, rodents and insects. Orkin has 358 owned and operated branch offices and 47 franchises in the U.S. The company also has international franchises and subsidiaries in Canada, Europe, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Asia, the Mediterranean, Africa, and Mexico. Orkin is committed to protecting public health by helping prevent and control pests as well as educating consumers on the potential health risks posed by these pests. As such, since 2020, Orkin has partnered with the American Red Cross® to inform the public about the health threats of mosquitoes while boosting our country's blood supply through monetary contributions and blood donations. Orkin is committed to hiring the world's best to help protect the places where we live, work and play. Learn more about careers at Orkin here. Visit for additional information. Orkin is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rollins Inc. (NYSE: ROL). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Orkin, LLC
Irish Times
28-06-2025
- Irish Times
‘It was not really human at all': policing the worst of Dublin's rental market, with its bed bugs, overcrowding and no leases
Julia Langneck was full of hope and excitement when she moved from Brazil to Dublin to learn English at 18 years of age. Within months of arriving in the country she would find herself living in a bedbug-infested bedsit, sharing a room with four other people and paying almost €400 a month for the privilege. There were eight people sharing one bathroom on the ground floor of the three-storey building on Bolton Street in Dublin's north inner city. They were allocated one shelf each in a shared fridge, one cupboard each in the kitchen and slept in bunk beds in two separate rooms. 'It was not really human at all; it was really terrible,' says Langneck. READ MORE She recalls watching a bedbug crawl across her phone one night, and sleeping in the livingroom for fear of being bitten. 'My two housemates had bruises and bites all over their body, and we had to pay for it to be cleaned,' she says. There were eight people sharing one kitchen on the ground floor of the three-storey building on Bolton Street in Dublin 1. Photograph: Julia Langneck When the situation became unbearable, Langneck decided to move out, but her landlord, Renato Passos, withheld her deposit. She brought a case against him to the Residential Tenancies Board, the rental market regulator and arbiter of landlord-tenant disputes. The board ordered him to pay the deposit and damages. It would not be the last time he would have dealings with the regulator. [ Dublin landlord hit with largest-ever RTB fine over failure to register tenancies Opens in new window ] Sources within the RTB this week gave The Irish Times an insight into how they investigate rogue landlords and what they have seen vulnerable tenants go through. Inside the RTB, a team of investigators work like a detective unit to turn tip-offs into tangible prosecutions under powers afforded to it in 2019. They report a pattern in their findings: landlords with multiple properties, the subdividing of dwellings, overcrowded units and the absence of lease agreements. They regularly find vulnerable tenants, who have often just arrived in Ireland with no real understanding of their tenancy rights, paying high rents in substandard accommodation and being threatened with eviction or being moved around to different locations with no notice and seemingly no other option. Part 7A of the Residential Tenancies Act was enacted in 2019 and gives powers to the RTB to investigate improper conduct by landlords. Under the Act the RTB can appoint 'authorised officers' to investigate complaints and gives them extensive powers of entry and search, as well as power to compel people to provide information. The outcome of the investigation is sent to a 'decision maker' within the RTB, who decides if improper conduct has occurred. A financial sanction can then be imposed on the landlord, and must be confirmed by the Circuit Court. Details of the sanctions – and the landlord who received them – are then published on the RTB website. Tenants were sleeping on beds on the floor of the bar area of what was once Buck Whaley's nightclub on Leeson Street While Langneck's case was taken through its disputes process, the RTB subsequently began its own independent investigation into Passos when media reports detailed serious overcrowding and unstable tenancies in properties he was leasing on Leeson Street in Dublin 2. In November 2024 this resulted in the RTB's largest ever sanction, with the company run by Passos, Sweet Home Accommodation Ltd, being fined €22,000 for a breach of rental laws at six city-centre properties under his control. Investigators established that he had failed to register 20 tenancies in properties on Leeson Street, Middle Abbey Street and Upper Abbey Street. During its investigation the RTB discovered Brazilian students were being targeted through language schools and on social media about properties Passos did not actually own but was subletting. The tenancies were very short term, only a few months in duration, and rents were on average €500 per month. Tenants were sleeping on beds on the floor of the bar area of what was once Buck Whaley's nightclub on Leeson Street. There was extensive overcrowding at this property and at multiple other properties run by Passos, with bunk beds crammed into makeshift apartments, mattresses laid on floors and livingrooms converted into bedrooms. In one property there were 15 people sharing one kitchen. Investigating this case proved particularly difficult for the RTB because almost all of the tenants had moved out, often back to Brazil, by the time the case started. Significant time was spent by investigators tracing down these tenants, calling, emailing and chasing them by any means possible to try to get their evidence on the record. Eventually they gathered enough responses to ground a case, noting the most striking thing about their evidence was that these people did not know they were tenants, nor that the landlord couldn't move them out in the morning, nor that they were entitled to privacy and space in their own home. Sweet Home Accommodation Ltd is now in liquidation and the RTB is not aware of any outstanding cases against Passos. Asked to comment on the investigations, Passos responded to say the company was no longer operating. While Passos engaged with the RTB investigators and was co-operative in their investigation, other landlords have proven much more difficult to track down. Serving the notice of investigation on Marc Godart proved particularly difficult Controversial Luxembourg landlord Marc Godart and his company Green Label Ltd has been issued several sanctions by the RTB, following the conclusion of multiple investigations into his conduct. The Irish Times has investigated his rental property interests over several years, finding repeated instances of overcrowded accommodation and unlawful evictions in his sprawling Irish rental portfolio. However, sources within the RTB say that serving the actual notice of investigation on him proved particularly difficult. An investigation cannot continue unless the board can prove this notice was received by the landlord, and so landlords often do their best to evade receiving it. The first line of defence is often hiding behind multiple different company names, requiring the regulator to trawl through company records to establish the person behind the front. In Godart's case, investigators found letters were returned to them because the letterbox of his registered address had been blocked up. When investigators called to hand over the letter in person, they found the office was on an upper floor of a multi-unit block that they could not access. In the end, they waited outside the office on five occasions in order to gain trust with those coming and going, who eventually let them in and allowed them to push a letter under the door of the registered address. The RTB is keen to emphasise its persistence in investigating improper conduct in the rental market, and latest figures show the number of sanctions it is securing is growing at a steady rate. In 2024 it published 75 sanctions, with a value of just over €238,000. This is almost four times higher than what it gathered in 2023, at €64,360. Julia Langneck: 'I really love Ireland, but accommodation is such a big issue' Julia Langneck says she is grateful for the investigations into Passos, who she feels made her time in a foreign land far more difficult than it needed to be. 'You feel that someone from your country is going to help you, because you just arrived and everything is hard, but it was totally the opposite,' she says. 'He just kind of used us to get money. 'It's really upsetting, because you think you just crossed the ocean to another country to try a better life, and then you meet someone from your own country, and you think that person is going to help you, but definitely not.' After six years in Ireland, she returned to Brazil this summer to be with her boyfriend, Deliveroo driver João Ferreira. Ferreira lost part of his right leg after being seriously injured when he was hit by a Garda vehicle on the M50 in 2023. He is awaiting more surgeries in his home city of São Paulo. As the couple adapts to the realities of this new life, Langneck reflects on her time in Ireland. 'When people ask me, I say I really love Ireland, but accommodation is such a big issue there. In the end I got a nice apartment, a nice job – after years of worry, I felt like it was worth it in the end.'
Telegraph
27-06-2025
- Telegraph
‘Travelodge tried to silence me with £89 after I was attacked by bed bugs'
Has a company treated you unfairly? Our Consumer Champion is available to help. For how to contact her click here. Dear Katie, For my birthday, I stayed at the Leicester City Centre Travelodge on May 26 for one night, and suffered the most dreadful shock during the night. I started feeling itchy, and thought something was biting me. When I searched the bed sheets, I found they were riddled with bed bugs. As it turns out, the room was severely infested, and not in any way fit for guests to stay in. I reported it to reception the next morning, where a staff member reviewed the photos and videos that I took. She was very apologetic, and said the manager would get in touch that same day to arrange compensation. However, no one ever did. Not only was this a horrible taint on my birthday, but I've also got underlying health issues including diabetes, which means my skin doesn't heal as fast as other people's. The stress of all this has seen my diabetes markers increase, and I have to seek medical advice. After chasing a few times, someone from Travelodge's customer services team finally responded. He confirmed that 'an infestation of pests was found in your room', which has apparently since been treated. He offered a full room refund of £38.99, as well as £50 compensation, but only if I agreed to a confidentiality clause preventing me from telling anyone about the incident or posting online. Quite honestly, this feels really off to me. Do you think this is a reasonable offer considering what happened? – Anon Dear reader, I was so sorry to hear that your birthday night away was ruined by this infestation of micro predators that feed on human blood during the night. Following the initial horror of discovering the room was severely infested with the pests, you've been left with scores of itchy red bites all over your skin. Possibly due to your diabetes, these have not healed after a few weeks, and since your wedding is coming up in just a couple of months, you are extremely stressed about them disappearing in time for your big day. Given the stress caused, you feel Travelodge's offer of £88.50 – if you sign a confidentiality clause to say you won't tell anyone about it – is unacceptable, and I completely agree with you. Especially after the way your serious complaint was pushed into the long grass and ignored. In fact, I have rarely heard of a company asking anyone to sign a confidentiality agreement for such a laughable amount of money before, so I was more than happy to take up your case. I told Travelodge that I felt the amount of compensation was far too low, and that you would not be happy to remain silent about your experience or any compensation you receive. You had already told me for a start, and I was planning to write an article about it in a national newspaper. It got back to you with a significantly higher offer of £500, which it said was 'full and final'. You asked me whether I thought this was fair, and I said I felt this amount certainly felt more proportional to the degree of suffering you had been subjected to. However, I warned you under no circumstances to accept the offer as 'full and final'. This was because there was now a very real risk that you could have inadvertently taken the bed bugs home and your own bedroom could be infested. After all, this is how bed bugs are spread – it's not necessarily because of poor hygiene or uncleanliness. Once they take hold in homes, they can be a nightmare to exterminate, potentially costing thousands of pounds to remove. So you replied saying you would accept the £500 on the basis that you reserve the right to bill Travelodge should a subsequent infestation arise at your home. Travelodge came back and offered to send out a pest control expert to your home to proactively inspect it and treat any infestation it finds, which we were both very happy to accept. However, there was a catch – it was not prepared to remove the confidentiality clause. I phoned its press office to let it know I was running this story with all the details, meaning the clause was pointless. Their reply was: 'Policy is policy.' Happily, just before this article went to press, common sense prevailed. Travelodge changed its mind and dropped the need for confidentiality from the agreement. It is still happy to pay you the compensation though, and organise the pest control visit. You have accepted its terms and will move on with your life. I wish you all the best with your upcoming nuptials, and sincerely hope the itchy bites are gone by then. A Travelodge spokesman said: 'We are very sorry to hear about the customer's recent stay with us. The safety and wellbeing of our customers is always our priority and we have robust prevention measures in place for bed bugs, an issue that affects the hospitality industry. 'Instances of bed bugs are extremely rare in our hotels, and we train our housekeeping colleagues to be vigilant and to spot early signs wherever possible. 'We have carried out a thorough investigation into the matter, apologised and offered her a gesture of goodwill. We hope that we can welcome her back to our hotels in the future and reinstate her faith in our brand.'
