Legal advise needed regarding bed bugs

[dispor]

Okay, so I don't even know for sure yet if it is a bedbug... I am taking it to the pest company on Monday.

Anyway... We stayed at two different hotels on vacation and then a few days in a cabin (in KY and TN), so I don't know exactly where we MAY have picked them up. My GUESS is that it may have been at a hotel that we stayed at using points. Maybe they put us in a room they knew was infested because we weren't paying for it...?

My question is - how can I find out for sure if it was this hotel? I know if I call the hotel they will say they inspected the room and found no evidence of bedbugs.

Can I hire someone to go and look? (Yes, I am serious.)

I am so hoping that this bug is NOT a bedbug, but I have a terrible fear that it is, and I am freaking out about it.

Any help is appreciated.

ETA: Ugh, meant to post this on the Community Board. I'll repost it over there.

 

[CowboyCO]

Just wondering why you need legal advice? I'd call each of the properties you stayed in and let them know. You could have transferred the bugs between properties and they should be notified so they can have your rooms debugged.

 

[Justsyd2]

I'm afraid that I don't understand. Even if it is a bedbug, why would you need legal advice? There's no way to even prove where you got it. It's simply a risk of traveling, but I do agree that you should alert the hotels so that they can take necessary steps if they need to.

 

[SarahKate]

I agree with other posters. I don't see how you would have any legal standing in this situation. It totally sucks for you if it really IS a bed bug but there's absolutely no way to prove it. And why would a hotel intentionally put you in a room known to be infested even if you were using points? That makes no sense at all. The last thing any hotel wants is to have a reputation for this.

Bed bugs are a problem of ALL class of hotels, it has nothing to do with how nice the hotel is. They don't just "show up" they arrive at hotels from previous hotel GUESTS.

You can do a Google image search and find all kinds of bed bug pictures to compare it to, which you can do while you're waiting to have a pest company confirm for you. Hoping maybe it's some sort of other bug you picked up!

 

[ssawka]

I don't get the legal advice thing either! You are going to sue a hotel for something that they have no control over especially when you don't know where it came from?

 

[blanq]

This is how I would handle it. I would call each of the three places you stayed. I would let each of them know that you stayed in three properties on your vacation, and you came home with bedbugs. You don't know where you picked them up, but there is a chance you got them at their property, or you brought them in with you and infested their property.

As far as your theory that a property put you in a room they "knew" was infested because you stayed there on points, I cannot believe that any resort/hotel in the world would knowingly keep their property infested with bed bugs....they make their living by having people stay at their properties so there would be no incentive for them to do so unless they puposefully want to end their business.

In the scheme of things, I personally do not think this is an end of the world kind of thing. Yes, bed bugs are yucky. But, if I found them, I would clean my stuff and move on.

 

[LuLuO]

I agree with PP that bed bugs are a risk of traveling and that you should call the properties as suggested to inform them. I too don't think you have any legal recourse because you can't prove where you got them from.

If you do have bed bugs I've read that treating with heat is the way to go. Not all companies use heat so be sure to ask.

 

[eliza61]

Okay, so I don't even know for sure yet if it is a bedbug... I am taking it to the pest company on Monday.

Anyway... We stayed at two different hotels on vacation and then a few days in a cabin (in KY and TN), so I don't know exactly where we MAY have picked them up. My GUESS is that it may have been at a hotel that we stayed at using points. Maybe they put us in a room they knew was infested because we weren't paying for it...?

My question is - how can I find out for sure if it was this hotel? I know if I call the hotel they will say they inspected the room and found no evidence of bedbugs.

Can I hire someone to go and look? (Yes, I am serious.)

I am so hoping that this bug is NOT a bedbug, but I have a terrible fear that it is, and I am freaking out about it.

Any help is appreciated.

ETA: Ugh, meant to post this on the Community Board. I'll repost it over there.

I'm assuming you need legal advice because you are thinking of suing.
Some things to consider.
Can you prove that you did not bring in the bedbugs? You may not have but the hotel is sure to question you.
In order to sue you are going to have to prove pretty reasonably that 1 specific place gave you the infestation. That's going to be pretty darn tricky considering you stayed in 3 different locations, one of them being the woods.

 

[mickeyluvr004]

I agree with the other posters also.. I had a real bad experience with bedbugs while traveling thru Virginia Beach. we stayed at the Days Inn in Chesapeake and my poor daughter who was 4 at the time had welts on her.. and i mean welts. we werent sure until after we left that, that is what it was.. she cleared up a few days later and thankfully we didnt bring any home but the thought of her going thru that was bad enough.. So all my dis friends beware and stay clear of that hotel.. i read bad reviews when we got home on tripvisor.com about people who stayed there weeks after we did and reported the same thing.. if u need the exact address pm me and i will happily give it..

 

[GoofyPrincess]

I have a good friend who is a 'bug lady' for a local exterminator - she goes in and assesses the situation and recommends treatments. I think she has seen everything - but bedbugs are her greatest fear.

She has told me that when checking into ANY hotel - no matter how nice or expensive it may be - leave all your bags in the hall or just inside the door, pull back all of the sheets on the bed and look in the sewn seems of the mattress for tiny, black bugs. Then - either take the mounted headboard off the wall or run a sheet of paper behind it and catch whatever may fall out on another sheet of paper (stationary from the desk or the phone notepad works fine). Check again for tiny black bugs.

In her experience, if those places are clear, you can be reasonably sure that the room is clean.

 

[sameyeyam]

There is a way to get rid of bedbugs that is relatively easy & inexpensive. This works in most situations where they haven't spread beyond the bed. Go to the store and buy 2 relatively inexpensive plastic mattress covers. Buy the kind that goes completely over the mattress and zips. Get two of them, one for the mattress and one for the box springs. Put them on each of them and then take several pieces of duct tape and completely tape over the entire zipper portion. The tape will keep the bed bugs from coming out. Since bed bugs can live several years, you will need to keep the plastic mattress covers on the beds for 2-3 years. Heck, I would just keep them on there forever!

I know sleeping on plastic is probably not an appealing idea, but if you get a good thick mattress pad cover or blankets to cover over the top of the plastic, you won't even notice it there.

I work in the hotel industry and this is a widely used way to get rid of MINOR bed bug problems. Some hotels even do this as a preventative measure, then the bed bugs can't ever get on the mattress to start with. However, more and more of the new hotel mattresses are made of materials that aren't bed bug friendly so in the future we should see less problems.

Most of the bed bugs are brought into the US by European travelers, where bed bugs are more common. Believe it or not, odds are the nicer the hotel you are staying at the more you could be exposed to bed bugs. Most international travelers tend to stay at nicer hotels, not the 2 star ones!

If you discover a lot of bed bugs & find them in multiple places around your home, then you may need to go a bit further and hire a pesticide company to help take care of the problem.

 

[eeyorethegreat]

ETA: Ugh, meant to post this on the Community Board. I'll repost it over there.

Since this is a cross post I thought I would give the link so it doesnt take up Budget Board space
you can follw the bugs over there
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2496352