Defend Pest Solutions Review

Weights add to 100% without the factors marked N/A. How the adjustments work

How we review companies Handshake Score v1.5.0 (rules v1.0.7, confidence v1.2.1)

“In score” marks the profiles counted in the customer-satisfaction factor.

Profile scope: Sioux Falls, South Dakota (3200 E Woodsedge St); BBB of Midwest Plains; no ND file found in BBB search for Sioux Falls File opened 9/1/2022, incorporated 1/5/2022, owners Gordon Dotson and Tyler Ewell. Other phone (605) 360-5305. BBB search near Sioux Falls returned 1 result.

Scored: Complaint record

BBB profiles

• Main profileView

Door-to-door sales: N/A

N/A: the research didn’t establish door-to-door selling. It isn’t proof that the company never knocks.

No door-to-door evidence found: no sales-rep job posts or recruiting site located, and the company is not on the North Dakota Attorney General transient-merchant licensee list (PDF text, 19 pages, searched for Defend/Dotson/Ewell: no match). The negative is weak (SD has no public permit list; Sioux Falls peddler permits not published). One search-result summary snippet mentioned a door-to-door warning but it was a rewritten summary with no page evidence, so it is not used.

• “Report Parameters License Status: Issued”

  attorneygeneral.nd.gov · retrieved November 2, 2026⁵

Contract terms and pricing

• No pricing, minimum term, auto-renewal, cancellation fee, cancellation method or arbitration terms are published on the company website (home, about, services, residential, rodent and bat pages read).⁶

  “Protecting your home and business from pests is not a one-time event.”

Status and expiry dates are shown exactly as the issuing agency’s record showed them on the date retrieved.

Only resolved government actions count toward the score. Pending lawsuits, allegations and private matters are listed here but marked “N/A” (not counted in the score). Summaries are our researchers’ wording of the source; allegations are allegations, not findings.

• November 2, 2026 · South Dakota · Complaint summaryScored: Complaint record

  BBB profile (BBB of Midwest Plains) shows 0 complaints and 0 customer reviews; business not BBB accredited; BBB rating “Not Rated”. File opened 9/1/2022.¹⁶

• November 2, 2026 · North Dakota · EnforcementN/A

  North Dakota Attorney General cease-and-desist orders page: no entry for Defend Pest Solutions, Dotson or Ewell (list covers 2018-2023 entries as displayed).¹⁷

• November 2, 2026 · North Dakota · PermitN/A

  North Dakota AG transient merchant (door-to-door) licensee list: no entry for Defend Pest Solutions, Dotson or Ewell.⁵

• November 2, 2026 · federal · LawsuitN/A

  CourtListener opinions search (default published-opinions results) for “Defend Pest Solutions”: no results. Docket and state-court records not searched.¹⁸

Workplace score: N/A. It carries 10% of the Handshake Score when at least 20 employee reviews are on file (otherwise excluded and remaining weights renormalized).

No employee reviews on file.

Awards and certifications

None verified.

What the company says about itself

These are the company’s own claims, quoted from its materials. We haven’t verified them.

• Owners claim 11 years each in pest control (18 combined) and “personally helped over 3,500 homeowners” (Gordon).⁴

• Company claims to treat “over 50 different kinds of pests” and to be “highly trained and fully certified”.¹

Mentions

None recorded.

Reddit hasn’t been searched for this company yet.

3 locations on file in North Dakota (2), South Dakota (1).

Overall confidence in this score: Low (provisional), 2 of 11 points. N/A (not scored): sales and contract fairness. The reason is under “How we scored it.”

What keeps it from rating higher:

• 824 western US Google reviews behind customer satisfaction (3,000 or more earns a point; 10,000 or more earns full points).
• 8 independent websites cited (25 or more earns a point).
• 4 of 5 factors scored (not scored: sales and contract fairness).
• Too few independent non-Google reviews to blend in (Google only).
• Verifier rated the customer reviews medium (high earns a point).
• Verifier rated the licensing medium (high earns a point).
• Verifier rated the legal and regulatory record medium (high earns a point).

How confidence is set

Gaps in the record

• Live Google pages not opened. Fargo listing first seen September 24, 2026.
• Fargo listing address (6719 Belding Dr S, Fargo, North Dakota 58104) differs from the website office (2480 5th St. W, Unit B, West Fargo, North Dakota 58078); not resolved. Phone on the listing (701-929-6560) matches the site, the raw record carries domain defendpestsolutions.net, not closed, and Ewell’s ND certificate shows Fargo 58104. Verified identity of the listing; the street difference is left open.
• South Dakota Secretary of State search blocked by reCAPTCHA; South Dakota LLC status/registered agent not verified (BBB says incorporated 1/5/2022; North Dakota foreign filing says formed in South Dakota).
• SD civil court records (paid/mail request) and ND district-court case search (popup app) not checked; federal CourtListener search returned no results. OSHA establishment search returned HTTP 405 (blocked), so workplace-safety records not verified.
• No DANR (South Dakota) or NDDA (North Dakota) public enforcement list exists; pesticide discipline not checkable beyond what is public.
• Yelp, Facebook, Indeed, Glassdoor not opened. Angi, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, Nextdoor, Trustpilot company pages not located by search; Angi Sioux Falls pest-control list page was fetched but no Defend entry was seen. Aggregator pages that mirror Google reviews (pestrox.com, mapquest, pestcontrol-companies.com) were not used.
• Employee reviews: none verified. A search result suggested a salary page listing a technician and a sales role; source not opened, so not recorded.
• No contract terms, pricing, minimum term, cancellation fee or arbitration clause published on the company site; the terms are unknown.
• Door-to-door status unknown: no job posts or recruiting pages found; North Dakota AG transient-merchant list negative (weak).
• SD DANR roster: Jacob Kampmann (51386) shows categories G,8 but no expiration date; recorded as shown. “Ewell, Steven” (SD 21871) is assumed to be owner Tyler Ewell (North Dakota record is Steven Tyler Ewell); same company name, same city, but the South Dakota record does not show a middle name.
• Ratings/identity of North Dakota business registry owner not shown because foreign LLC records do not list members.
• SD individual licenses: owners Dotson (21873) and Ewell (21871) show EXPIRED on the DANR roster re-run November 2, 2026, while Steven Johnson 50896 (to Mar 31 2028, G,8,9) is current and Kampmann 51386 shows categories but no expiry. SD issues no company license, so nothing is scored (individual operator entries do not count; Pfitzer and Kodiak handled the same way). Whether the owners still apply pesticide in SD is not known.
• Both were researched. The Iowa and Minnesota pulls in the raw records are category searches that returned the same two listings, not Iowa or Minnesota locations.

Open questions

• Is the Fargo listing (6719 Belding Dr S) a separate office or the West Fargo operation at another address?
• Are the owners still applying pesticide in South Dakota (their South Dakota licenses show EXPIRED)?
• South Dakota Secretary of State record not checkable (reCAPTCHA).