Hear from Our Customers
When bed bugs move in, everything changes. You stop sleeping well. You start doubting every itch. You pull back the sheets before bed like it’s a nightly ritual you never asked for. The goal isn’t just to treat the problem — it’s to get you back to normal, completely and confidently.
Clio’s housing stock works against you here. Older ranch-style homes and two-story colonials — the kind you’ll find throughout the city and into Vienna Township — have aged baseboards, wall voids, and flooring gaps that give bed bugs more places to hide than newer construction ever would. A treatment that doesn’t account for that isn’t really a treatment. It’s a delay.
There’s also the multi-unit reality. If you’re living in one of Clio’s apartment complexes — places like Madison Court on Smith Street or the senior units at Roxbury Court — bed bugs don’t respect walls. They move through shared conduits, outlets, and common areas. Getting ahead of it, fast, is the only way to keep a single-unit problem from becoming a building-wide one. That’s exactly what professional bed bug control in Clio is designed to do.
We founded First Choice Pest Control on May 31, 2005 — which means in 2025, we’re marking 20 years of serving Genesee County families, including the Clio community. We’re headquartered in Swartz Creek, just minutes from Clio, and we’ve been a fixture in this area long enough to know the difference between a company that shows up once and one that earns your trust over time.
Roger Chinault leads the company with 26 years of hands-on pest control experience. He’s not a franchise owner reading from a corporate playbook — he’s a working professional who built this business from the ground up and still holds it to the same standard today. We hold Integrated Pest Management (IPM) credentials, are fully licensed through Michigan’s MDARD, and have earned recognition from both Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor.
We serve both residential and commercial clients, offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders, and match reasonable competitor rates — because we’d rather earn your business on results than lose it over price.
It starts with detection — and this is where we do something most companies in the Clio area simply can’t. We’re one of fewer than 100 companies in the entire United States with a certified canine bed bug detection program. A trained K-9 team inspects your home with 90–98% accuracy, locating live bugs and viable eggs behind baseboards, inside wall voids, under carpets, and inside furniture joints. Human visual inspection alone sits at 17–40% accuracy. That gap matters enormously when you’re dealing with an older home where bed bugs have more places to disappear.
Once the inspection is complete, you get a clear picture of exactly what you’re dealing with — where the infestation is, how far it’s spread, and what treatment will actually address it. We build a plan specific to your home, not a one-size-fits-all spray schedule. In multi-unit buildings, that plan accounts for how infestations move between units through shared walls and conduits — a real concern in Clio’s apartment stock and one the Genesee County Health Department specifically addresses in its guidance to landlords and tenants.
Treatment is followed by a follow-up visit to confirm the infestation has been eliminated. Bed bug eggs can survive an initial treatment, which is why a single visit is rarely the full answer. The same technician who handled your inspection handles your follow-up — someone who already knows your home, your layout, and your specific situation. No rotating strangers. No starting over from scratch.
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Every bed bug pest control service in Clio through First Choice starts with the K-9 detection inspection — not a clipboard walkthrough, but a certified canine sweep that finds what human eyes miss. From there, treatment is built around what the inspection actually reveals, targeting all life stages of the infestation, including eggs that chemical-only treatments often leave behind.
You’re assigned the same technician for every visit. That’s not a small thing. In a community like Clio, where homes along Mill Street and throughout Vienna Township vary significantly in age, layout, and construction, familiarity with your specific property makes a real difference in how thoroughly the job gets done. Your technician isn’t guessing — they know your home.
We hold MDARD certification, which is Michigan’s legal requirement for commercial pesticide applicators — not optional, not decorative. Our IPM-based approach means treatments are targeted and deliberate, which matters if you have children, pets, or elderly family members in the home. There are no binding contracts, no pressure to sign up for services you don’t need, and no surprises on pricing. If you’ve found a reasonable competitor rate, bring it — we’ll match it. For seniors, veterans, and first responders in the Clio area, discounts are available and applied without any hoops to jump through.
The most common signs are small rust-colored stains on your mattress or sheets, tiny dark spots along baseboards or behind headboards, and bites that appear in clusters or lines — usually on exposed skin. That said, bites alone aren’t a reliable indicator, since reactions vary widely from person to person and can be mistaken for other insects.
The harder truth is that in older homes — the kind that make up a large portion of Clio’s residential stock — bed bugs can be well-established before you ever see a single insect. They tuck into wall voids, outlet covers, carpet edges, and furniture joints that a casual inspection won’t catch. That’s exactly why a certified canine detection inspection is worth it before you spend a dollar on treatment. If the K-9 team doesn’t find them, you’re not guessing — you know.
Yes — and it happens faster than most people expect. Bed bugs move through shared walls, electrical conduits, plumbing chases, and under door frames. In a multi-unit building, a single infested unit can become a building-wide problem within weeks if it isn’t addressed quickly and thoroughly.
This is something the Genesee County Health Department specifically addresses in its guidance for renters and landlords in Clio. If you’re in one of Clio’s apartment complexes — including multi-unit buildings near the Vienna Road corridor — and you suspect bed bugs, notifying your landlord immediately isn’t just the right move, it’s a legal obligation under Michigan housing code. Michigan law requires landlords to address pest infestations in rental units. A professional inspection that documents the source and scope of the infestation is valuable both for treatment and for any landlord-tenant conversations that follow.
Professional bed bug treatment typically ranges from $1,500 to $5,000 depending on the size of the home, the severity of the infestation, and how many treatment visits are needed. That’s a real number, and it’s worth being honest about it upfront.
What’s also worth being honest about is the cost of not treating — or of treating it wrong. Store-bought sprays don’t kill eggs, and they often scatter bugs deeper into wall voids and furniture, making the infestation harder to find and more expensive to eliminate later. In Clio, where many homes have the kind of older construction that gives bed bugs more places to hide, a failed DIY attempt can turn a contained problem into a whole-home situation. We match reasonable competitor rates, so if you’ve received another quote, bring it. The goal is to make sure cost isn’t the reason you settle for a company that won’t get it done right.
No. This is one of the most common misconceptions about bed bugs, and it’s an expensive one to hold onto. Bed bugs are indoor pests. They live in heated spaces year-round, and Michigan’s winters — including the cold months in Clio when temperatures regularly drop into the teens and twenties — have zero effect on an infestation inside a warm home.
What cold weather does do is keep people inside more, which actually increases the amount of time you spend in close contact with infested areas like beds, couches, and upholstered furniture. If anything, winter is when an undetected infestation has more opportunity to grow. There is no off-season for bed bug treatment. If you’re seeing signs in January, the problem is just as real and just as urgent as it would be in July.
The most common entry points are travel, secondhand furniture, and contact with infested spaces. Clio sits right at the I-75 and M-57 interchange — Exit 131 — which means residents are active commuters along one of Michigan’s busiest north-south corridors. Hotel stays, visits to high-traffic venues along the I-75 corridor, and even public transit in Flint are all realistic introduction points for bed bugs to hitch a ride home.
Secondhand furniture is another significant vector, and it’s a practical reality in a community where garage sales, thrift stores, and online marketplace pickups are common. A mattress or upholstered chair that looks clean on the curb can carry eggs that aren’t visible to the naked eye. If you’ve recently brought used furniture into your home and started noticing signs, that’s worth mentioning when you call. It helps narrow down where the infestation likely started and how far it may have spread.
Yes — we offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders, and Clio has a meaningful population in all three categories. Roxbury Court, the senior housing complex within the city, is exactly the kind of environment where bed bugs can be both harder to detect and more disruptive to daily life — especially for residents on fixed incomes who may have delayed calling because of cost concerns.
The discount isn’t a promotional add-on. It’s a straightforward reduction applied when you call and mention it. Seniors living alone or in assisted-living-style arrangements also tend to benefit most from the same-technician model — knowing who is coming into your home, every time, is a real comfort when you’re inviting someone into your personal space. If you or someone you’re helping in the Clio area qualifies, just ask when you reach out.
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