Plunkett's Pest Control 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.

In reviewers’ words

Quoted verbatim, up to 300 characters, as recorded by our researchers with the reviewer’s first name and last initial at most. Low and high ratings are shown alternately.

Profile scope: company-wide headquarters file (Columbus, Ohio); includes corporate-owned locations in non-Western states, so not attributable to the West Verified live November 2, 2026 (HQ profile, complaints, reviews pages 1-2, more-info; Fridley and Omaha branch files). HQ file: A+, accredited since 4/17/1985 (Fridley branch file since 8/9/2019), 5 complaints in the last 3 years, 2 in the last 12 months, no pattern alert, 3/5 from 12 reviews. Only 3 of the 5 complaints are displayed (July 2026 Resolved, Nov 2025 Resolved, May 2025 Answered); none names a town, and they concern wildlife trapping billing/follow-up and a company-canceled service. The Fridley branch file (ID 0704-13584) repeats the HQ header and complaint summary but lists 14 different reviews; the Omaha file (ID 0714-1000071697, accredited since 3/13/2025) lists no reviews or complaints. ‘Date of New Ownership: 2/1/2018’ appears on the HQ file and ‘10/1/2003’ on the Fridley file.

Scored: Complaint record

Complaint themes

• Wildlife-trapping service follow-up and billing (2 complaints, answered/resolved with refunds)
• Service not provided and contract canceled by the company, refund disputed (1 complaint, answered)

BBB profiles

• Main profile · A+View

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 selling evidence found: no summer-sales or D2D recruiting, no permit actions, and no customer report of reps at the door in the BBB reviews or complaints read. Customers book by phone, web or technician visit. Absence of evidence only (Indeed, Glassdoor, Reddit and Facebook were not read directly). The verifier also read the Fridley BBB branch reviews: one reviewer says a different company solicited door to door; nothing links reps at the door to Plunkett’s.

• “A job as a Plunkett's Pest Control Technician will get you out and about on a schedule you design around your life with variety and room for growth!”

  plunketts.net · retrieved November 2, 2026⁵

• “Our Client Services or Field Technician pros thoroughly explain every service, fee, and solution before you commit to anything.”

  plunketts.net · retrieved November 2, 2026⁴

Contract terms and pricing

• Residential HomeGuard program: the initial service agreement is for 1 year and renews at the end of the year unless the customer cancels.⁶

  “The initial service agreement is for 1 year and renews at the end of the year (unless you choose to cancel).”

  Scored: Sales and contract fairness (−1, −0.5)

• HomeGuard advertised from $37/month (1,200-1,700 sq ft homes); payment by autopay, emailed link, portal, or annually in advance with a 3% discount.⁶

  “Annually in advance, with a 3% discount”

• HomeGuard includes free call-backs between scheduled services.⁶

  “Free Call-backs: If anything comes up between scheduled service calls, your technician will come out and take care of it at no extra charge.”

• Company ‘Difference’ page says clients are not required to sign anything for interior service at a distance; estimates, service reports and receipts are sent electronically. (Wording dates from the COVID-era page; it sits beside the 1-year HomeGuard agreement.)⁴

  “clients are not required to sign anything”

• Satisfaction guarantee quoted on the BBB profile: the company redoes service at no additional cost if a customer is not satisfied.⁷

  “If our service is not up to customer satisfaction simply communicate what went wrong and we will redo the service at no additional cost to fulfill the expectations.”

• HomeGuard FAQ: ‘Can I cancel my HomeGuard service?’ is answered that the plan renews annually and can be canceled any time after the first year with no penalties. This confirms the 12-month initial term and annual auto-renewal; it does not address canceling inside the first year.⁶

  “Yes, the plan renews annually, but you can cancel any time after the first year, no penalties.”

  Scored: Sales and contract fairness (−1, −0.5)

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 · company-wide (BBB headquarters file) · Complaint summaryN/A

  BBB: 5 complaints in the last 3 years (2 in the last 12 months), A+ rating, accredited, no pattern alert shown. Displayed complaints concern wildlife trapping service follow-up/billing (refunds issued) and a company-canceled service with a disputed refund (answered).⁴¹

• March 25, 2024 · Illinois (U.S. District Court, N.D. Illinois) · LawsuitN/A

  Followell v. Plunkett’s Pest Control, Inc., 1:24-cv-02392: Fair Labor Standards Act wage-and-hour suit by a former employee, filed March 25, 2024 and terminated September 12, 2024. The docket header does not say whether it settled, was dismissed or was adjudicated (CourtListener and Justia dockets are behind human-verification checks and were not worked around), so it is treated as an unresolved/unverified wage case, not a government action, and is not scored.⁵³

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).

Awards and certifications

• NPMA QualityPro company listing (several Plunkett’s entries, Fridley phone 763-571-7100), NPMA QualityPro, 2026⁵⁷

  Source shown; issuer check not recorded

  The QualityPro ‘find a pro’ search for ‘Plunkett’ returns several Plunkett’s Pest Control entries (Fridley Minnesota, plus entries with 773, 505 and 724 area codes). The page does not state which accreditation level each holds.

• QualityPro board of directors: Aly Silva Mulgrew (Plunkett’s president) is Treasurer, NPMA QualityPro, 2026⁵⁸

  Source shown; issuer check not recorded

  Industry-board seat, not an award.

What the company says about itself

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

• Company says it serves over 70,000 residential and commercial clients in 22 states (including Varment Guard wildlife services); regional offices are in Columbus, Ohio and Farmington, New Mexico.³

• Footprint outside the 24 covered states: Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. BBB’s service-area list names Ohio, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin as fully served, and Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Illinois and Indiana in various locations.⁴²

• Covered states with a company service-area page or license but no office address or Google listing found: South Dakota (Sioux Falls and Rapid City markets; the Sioux Falls page says ‘local offices’), Oklahoma (Oklahoma City and Tulsa markets; ODAFF pesticide license 8333), Colorado (CDA commercial license only), and an Omaha, Nebraska BBB branch file at 11425 P St # 454.⁵⁹

• Growth by acquisition (company blog): McKinzie Pest Control (Manhattan and Emporia, Kansas, 2024), Total Care Pest Management (Eastern Kansas, 2023), Harmony Pest Management (Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2022), Beast Wildlife Solutions (Bloomington, Minnesota, 2022), plus Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania firms.⁶⁰

• BBB profile lists 725 employees and Stacy O’Reilly as owner (headquarters file) and President/Director of Development contacts.⁷

• Wildlife removal is sold through the Varment Guard division in Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and parts of Kentucky.⁶¹

Mentions

• Pest Control Technology · Trade press · May 5, 2023 · Neutral toneRead

  PCT Top 100 (2023 poster): Plunkett's ranked #18, Fridley Minnesota

  PCT’s 2023 Top 100 list of largest pest control firms puts Plunkett’s at #18 (previous year #17) with $90,000,000 revenue, 660 employees; revenue is self-reported to PCT.

  “18 Plunkett’s Pest Control 17 Fridley MN $90,000,000 13% 10% 90% 1% 9% 30% 70% 660 3”

• Pest Control Technology · Trade press · May 3, 2024 · Positive toneRead

  PWIPM Minnesota, Girl Scouts Empower Girls in STEM

  PCT search-results page reports a Women in Pest Management outreach event held at Plunkett’s Fridley office with Girl Scouts.

  “The groups collaborated on April 20, at Plunkett's Pest Control, Fridley, Minn., with the goal of igniting the passion for STEM”

• PacerMonitor · Other · March 25, 2024 · Negative toneRead

  Pacer docket: Followell v. Plunkett's Pest Control, Inc. (N.D. Ill. 1:24-cv-02392)

  Fair Labor Standards Act case filed March 25, 2024 and terminated September 12, 2024.

  “Nature of Suit 710 Labor - Fair Labor Standards Act”

Reddit hasn’t been searched for this company yet.

26 locations on file in Arkansas (1), California (1), Iowa (1), Kansas (6), Minnesota (7), Missouri (3), Nebraska (2), New Mexico (3), North Dakota (1), Texas (1).

Overall confidence in this score: Low (provisional), 2 of 11 points.

What keeps it from rating higher:

• Company pesticide license not confirmable in Arkansas and California.
• 4,165 western US Google reviews behind customer satisfaction (10,000 or more earns full points).
• Too few independent non-Google reviews to blend in (Google only).
• Some figures in the score are company-wide or national, not western US-specific.
• 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).
• Verifier corrected or removed 15.7% of the items checked (10% or fewer earns a point).

How confidence is set

Gaps in the record

• Google Maps was not opened (its terms forbid automated access), so no Google review excerpts were collected. Fridley was also checked against the BBB branch file address, Farmington NM against todayshomeowner.com, and Lubbock Texas against the TDA license county.
• San Francisco, California listing: website field is plunketts.net, claimed, company-style description, but it has one photo, unusual hours, no page on plunketts.net, and no California Structural Pest Control Board record or county penalty (ca-license and ca-penalties return 0 rows; the SPCB snapshot omits canceled registrations). California licensing is unconfirmed.
• Hillsboro, Missouri listing: website field is plunketts.net, but the description and phone are not the company’s and the listing was first seen September 27, 2026. Kept; identity beyond the website field is unconfirmed.
• Rochester, Minnesota listing is named ‘Varment Guard Wildlife Services’ (the company’s wildlife division, which BBB lists as a related business). Not included: three Google listings on the domain varmentguard.com.
• Company-site location pages: plunketts.net times out in an automated browser, so pages were fetched with plain HTTP GET (robots.txt allows /service-area, /blog and the pages cited). The location pages under /service-area/ list markets and cities, not office addresses, and none mentions California. The company’s lycensed.com certification list (linked from /licenses-labels-sds) is disallowed by that site’s robots.txt (/orgs/) and was not fetched, so no company-advertised license numbers were checked; plunketts.net itself advertises no license numbers.
• Licensing not verified: Arkansas; New Mexico (not looked up; NMDA lookup terms restrict commercial use); California (not in the SPCB snapshot, which omits canceled registrations); Nebraska and North Dakota (individual-only states, not looked up); South Dakota shows individual applicators only (first results page captured, 128 items); Kansas Salina and Liberal (no PBL address of their own on PBL 7071). Business registries not read: Iowa and Kansas (CAPTCHA), Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico and South Dakota (CAPTCHA), Texas, Arkansas, California, Oklahoma and Colorado (licensing/registry for these states); only the Minnesota and North Dakota registries were read.
• Regulatory searches found nothing: local bulk files returned 0 rows for ‘Plunkett’ in the California SPCB licensee file, California county civil penalties (September 2024 to August 2026) and Texas TDA enforcement; no attorney general, FTC, EPA or state-agriculture action turned up in 17 broad web searches. Minnesota (MDA), Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, New Mexico, Arkansas and Oklahoma publish no enforcement list that was checked here (Arkansas Plant Board minutes and Colorado/other enforcement tables were not read). OSHA’s establishment search showed a human-verification check and was not used.
• Followell v. Plunkett’s (N.D. Ill. 1:24-cv-02392, FLSA, terminated September 12, 2024): only the PacerMonitor header was read (filed March 25, 2024, terminated September 12, 2024, last checked September 21, 2024); CourtListener and Justia show human-verification check pages (not worked around), so whether it settled or was dismissed is unknown and the case stays unscored. A federal case where Plunkett’s is the plaintiff (Plunkett’s Pest Control, Inc. v. McClernon, S.D. Ohio 2:25-cv-00575) was seen only in a search snippet and is not a claim against the company.
• Reviews not read directly: Yelp (94 reviews seen only in a search title), Glassdoor, Indeed (terms forbid automated access), Facebook, Nextdoor, Trustpilot, HomeAdvisor and Thumbtack (no profiles found), RepVue. No employee rating is scored; Workplace will lack the 20-review minimum from this record.
• BBB: the headquarters file’s reviews (12) and complaints (5) pool corporate-owned locations in the West and outside it (Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania), so they cannot be attributed to the 24 covered states; no state-specific BBB profile with its own counts was found. The Fridley, Minnesota branch file lists 14 reviews of its own beneath a header that repeats the HQ’s 3/5 from 12; recorded and not scored. The BBB HQ complaints page shows only 3 of the 5 complaints.
• Ownership: the company calls itself family-owned and privately held (third-generation owner and board chair Stacy O’Reilly); no outside investor was found, but no investor filing or press release ruling one out was located. BBB’s HQ file shows ‘Date of New Ownership: 2/1/2018’ with no buyer named. Dates on the company’s ‘Difference’ page (about not signing anything) appear to predate the 1-year HomeGuard agreement wording.
• Contract terms: only the residential HomeGuard page’s ‘initial service agreement is for 1 year and renews’ wording and its FAQ (‘cancel any time after the first year, no penalties’) were found. The early-cancellation fee inside the first year, the cancellation method and any arbitration or class-waiver clause are not published (the signed agreement was not seen; no Terms of Use page exists on the site map). Wildlife (Varment Guard) terms of service are mentioned in a BBB complaint but were not found online.
• The company’s own pages describe technician and client-services roles.

Open questions

• Fridley BBB branch file lists 14 reviews (avg 4.14) under a 3/5 from 12 header. Scored as displayed (3.0 from 12, HQ). Decide whether to count the list (combined 94/26 = 3.62; would blend about 2.5%).
• Add them or not.
• San Francisco, California listing (website plunketts.net, 8 reviews, 3.4) and Hillsboro, Missouri listing (website plunketts.net, 1 review, off-template description) are kept; neither is confirmed beyond the website field.
• Followell v. Plunkett’s outcome unknown (CourtListener and Justia bot-checked); unscored. Needs a docket page showing settlement or judgment.
• Arkansas, California, New Mexico licensing and the Nebraska/North Dakota/South Dakota business registries remain unverified (licensing/registry).