CRAZY mole pricing...

Just a few recent calls I've received - One was for considerable mole damage with current activity. Competitor came out and set three traps in one area, left, and hadn't returned in over three months as well as no calls being returned. Customer asked me to pull the three traps and they were all rusted up and unable to even fire. I set eight traps and caught the mole overnight. Another call was about another competitor who placed two boxes of Talpirid worms and charged the customer $400 with guaranteed results and a return visit if needed. Of course the moles are still there and he won't return her calls. So she called Terminix and received a quote of $1200 to spray the lawn to "kill the food source" so the moles would leave. Of course she declined. Referred her to a friend who was very close to her. The funny thing is I have had some Terminix employees call me seeking employment due to layoffs because business was way down. One said that 26 had been let go just from one area. At those prices I can see why.

Seems like I need to get into moles, I could definatley not solve a problem for $400!

You mean EARTHWORMS ?
...which are the bulk of a moles diet year round.

What's legal to kill earthworms ?
Nothing!
Whoever said that is so full of crap!

Over here in the Uk everyones on the mole bandwagon, and theres some crazy prices being quoted. I always try and go in competetively and rarely lose a job, and thats despite making sure that theres alot of profit in it for me.
I went to price upa sports pitch the other day.....they were about 20 mole hills and , at a guess, no more than 5 moles. They'd been quoted £450 i found out later. Anyway, I said £160 and they agreed. it will take me about 20 minutes to set them and ten minutes to lift them. AND they also said because I'm so reasonable they want me to look at their rat bait boxes and i am talking them into a mole contract..... so sometimes, it pays not to try and milk every last penny out of a customer.....i have a motto...always leave them smiling.

roe, what is that in American dollars ?

I charged them almost $250........ they had been quoted over $700

Still trying to figure out the pricing myself.I had several small residential yards I contracted for $300.00 flat rate. One of those I pulled 12 moles out of this summer(was next to a cemetary) lol it was an all summer job, owner was thrilled with his yard though.One of the others I have pulled 8 out of.Recolonization was a plague for me lol.Going back to the drawing board before spring.

Thats the problem with yards and gardens. You really do not want to give the houseowner more than a 2 week guarantee. Otherwise you'll be back and forth and not make a dime. I often charge $120-$140 for clearance, but they only get a week or two guarantee.....that way you often egt two bites at the cherry in a year. I learnt my mistake when i gave a guy a price for the year, i had to be competative as i knew he'd had others around, so i underpriced myself if i'm honest. I ended up making a lot of trips to that garden!
HOWEVER.....me and the home owner got along great, and this year the price has gone up to $220 for the year and i have managed to talk him into letting me do his rat control too....so all in all, it worked out ok in the end!

roe, my part of Wisconsin has no moles at all, while the western part of the state does. Are their parts of England that have no moles?

Well, theres moles all over the place, but there are also isolated areas with no moles. But they're spreading and its all good news for me! I would say that there aren't many places where you'd have to travel far to see the moles....

I've had more recent calls with crazy pricing over the last few weeks. The "ultimate termite" company quoted over $1000 to spray a lawn to kill the food source so the moles would just "go away" with one free follow up if necessary. Another one of the "environmental services" companies quoted $1295 for the same thing. Of course this was once again in Arkansas where it is illegal to poison any mammal other than rats or mice. Another trapper here in my area told a prospect that she had at least a dozen moles tearing up her lawn and would do it for a flat rate of $795. She called me and after trapping ONE mole the issue was resolved and she generated two new referrals. Here's the best one - I was trapping a lawn and noticed one of my competitors (a pest control company) was working another lawn nearby. He stopped by when finished and claimed he had been trapping the lawn for 3 weeks with no results and asked if I could tell him what he was doing wrong! Yeah, right...

Wonder how much better since Critter Control is being gobbled up.

I was told that the Critter Control people were told that everything would be exactly the same at least for a while.

We just set up a large estate horse farm Wednesday for moles. Probably 6+ acres of prime lawn frontage and the residential lawn estate perimeter with landscaping. Talk about prime mole habitat infested with a bountiful worm population. Life couldn't be better for them.

There were a few historic Oak and Chestnut trees I estimate to be 150 to 200 plus years old on the property. So I can only guess how many generations of moles that have become residents of the estate. It took 3 of us about 3-1/2 hours for the first initial set up. We could have spent more time there but we had another appointment to get to so we had to leave.

What a significant network of sub surface runs with little to no surface disturbance to read.

I didn't count but we set somewhere around 75 to 100 or more locations collectively. Mostly Albano's but a few doz. O/S, however a large percentage of the runs were deeper level runs on this property so not many O/S 's were used. Tomorrow should be a good harvest as most of the runs that I set felt like they had a lot of use as was the opinion of our other techs.

We don't do food source control but we can provide mole control thru harvesting moles like we all do here. This is our largest contract of my career in business for mole control.

Some of these pest control folks do some trapping programs and many try to sell grub control thru chemical applications which is completely a waste of money for the customer if they think it will help their mole population.

Most of us have seen or followed up after many such lawn treatments either professionally done services or some consumer attempts of their own. Most finally realize after many dollars spent that their remedies and devices are not effective.

My largest contract for moles was a 139 acre field...customer had tried 40 spear traps with zero success...told me he wanted to pay by the mole and initially told me he wanted to pay me $100 per mole...i told him i would feel guilty at that price...so he said i would take $85...,i said ok and set over 40 traps and had 4 caught before leaving....after 75 moles caught that first month and a half...he asked what i normally charged which was $65 per mole...he said that sounded better....he was a customer all 8 years i was in sw mo...handed him off to another mole trapper down there when i moved back home to Iowa

I've been seeing a lot of deep tunnels this year. I hope the moles collectively get back to the surface! I don't like having to dig down so deep. Too much lawn gets disturbed.

I wish I could get $65 a mole!! I'm trapping a couple of hundred a week!

I am guessing we will get 75 to 100 in our first week to 10 days. Never have seen so much wide spread activity. Today will tell me what is to come after the first check.

They started showing up in my traps last week.

Joshua, I can't help but wonder if your customer wouldn't have been better off selling his 139 acres and moving to Dubai!

he had been trapping the lawn for 3 weeks with no results and asked if I could tell him what he was doing wrong! Yeah, right...[/quote]
...he wasn't working for you!