Okay I will try to summarize as best I can. I live on the first floor of a three family house. The landlord and his family (6 people total) live upstairs, they occupy the second and third floor. My floor has two bedrooms that a close friend of mine and I shared until March of 2009. I finally had another roommate move in at the end of May. By the end of June I started seeing bug bites on my ankles and legs.

I didn’t think too much of it at first, It would only be two or three of them, and not every night. It was summer, there are mosquitoes and the house I live in is older, strange bugs make appearances from time to time. By the end of July however I noticed more of them, and on the day I woke up w/more than a dozen bites I started researching. Bed Bugs came up in most searches, along w/fleas and chiggers. The other two are easily eliminated so I focused on the bed bugs. I couldn’t however find any sign of them in my room the way that any of the sites I went to said to check for them.

After a week of this I figured I must be overreacting. I went away for the second week of August and the bites pretty much stopped though, so my suspicions arose again, and by the end of that next week after vacation I finally spotted one next to my pillow in the early morning hours. I freaked of course.

I notified my landlord that day who had his wife contact an exterminator immediately. They were unable to come out for a full week but I was just glad something was in the works. When I spoke to my roommate however that night, to ask him if he’d gotten any bug bites lately, his reply was ‘oh yeah, I’d been meaning to ask you about that,’ and went on to say he thought it might be something from my birds. (I have 4 conures, I’m meticulous w/their cages and sweeping/vacuuming of the area they’re in. My oldest one is almost 14 years old and I’ve had them long enough to feel confident I’d recognize something this major w/them.) Needless to say I was a bit insulted but I didn’t want to start anything, I just wanted the problem taken care of.

I assured him it did not come from the birds, and that it was in fact bed bugs. We both started trying to think of where they would have come in. Neither of us have had any visitors from out of town over w/the exception of my mother, who doesn’t have bed bugs and thankfully still doesn’t even after her stay. I went away once but the friends I shared the hotel room with didn’t have them, nor did the hotel as far as I know, since our bags were all in the same place during our stay how could I be the only one to bring them back? My roommate had gone away for a weekend but also to a friend’s house, who doesn’t have bed bugs. It wasn’t until later in the week I realized the bites had started appearing very shortly after my roommate first moved in. He of course said no he didn’t bring them or his last roommates would have called him or something. But he used to talk of how dirty they were and had people over all the time from different areas, some of them shady. I know bed bugs aren’t only around dirty people, it can happen in the cleanest environment, but the way he spoke of them I could believe they’d be of the mindset that they wouldn’t mind living with it.

When the exterminators finally came however they confirmed that the infestation was mainly in his bedroom, the closet in particular was inundated w/them, and my bedroom was only the beginnings of an infestation, the spillover I suppose, since his had grown so large. Even as they stood there in front of my landlord, my roommate and myself and told us this news, he still denied it and blamed it on his brand new futon that came sealed and boxed from Ikea. Now okay sure I know there are stories of people getting them in store bought mattresses that aren’t as new as advertised…but really? I just find it hard to believe in this case. I also still wonder how come he never once asked me about the bites. He HAD to have been getting them long long before I did, and only said he had them when I brought it up to him. If he truly believed they were from me and not him why would he not come say something immediately?

Now for as far as the process getting ready for the spraying, I had double bagged up all my clothes, emptied my drawers, pulled all sheets, blankets, pillow cases, etc… off the bed, pulled the curtains down …all of this in double bags. Vacuumed several times – the whole house (w/the exception of his room, thru all of this that’s all I’ve ever asked him to take care of) Everything was washed and dried on the highest heat settings. My roommate did none of this, he carried his clothes out in open bins and walked it to the laundromat around the corner.

Every three days since the first spraying – which was on September 2nd – I’ve vacuumed the entire house, pulling furniture away from walls and going under and around everything, into couch cushions, using the extension for base boards
Bugs are still not gone, the exterminators are saying it has to be on our end, either we’re bringing them in still or doing our own home remedy, which would void the warranty, coincidentally, and how do you prove you didn’t? Also my roommate has just told me his retail job of 1 and a half months is transferring him…so he’s gone by December 1st. We split the cost of the treatments so far, 0 each…but if it ends up we need a different exterminator I will be stuck paying more…is there any way I can legally have him held responsible for this w/the exterminators being able to confirm the major infestation was in his room and the first time the bites started appearing coinciding w/his moving in?