Did You Get Bed Bugs From Rented Furniture?

This story comes to us courtesy of BAKERSFIELD, California. There is a family there that has bed bugs infesting two couches and a bed that they have in their home. The kicker to this is that the furniture is rented!

“If you pull the lining down, then you can see all the bed bugs in there,” Anna Marie Eaton said. She said an exterminator had just treated the room. The exterminator had come to follow up, after treating an upstairs bedroom.

One day she noticed her son had a lot of red bite marks and wondered what insect they came from. She sprayed him with bug spray the next night but he still woke up with more bites. During the night she went into his room and flipped the lights on only to find bed bugs all over the place! They were crawling all over him and his bed.

The family had rented the furniture from Rent-A-Center and believed that the furniture had been previously rented. They feel that the rented furniture is what brought the bed bugs into their home. The the store came to remove the bed, the moving crew had to dismantle to frame. After doing so there were a good amount of bed bugs that came out.

Rent-A-Center does take steps to ensure the stores stay clean and free of insects.

Dominicis said every Rent-A-Center store is treated once a month by a licensed exterminator.

He said “sanitizing agents” approved by each state are used to treat the furniture, and the furniture is also visually inspected.

Bed bugs are hitch hikers and will latch on to a host to find the next location for feeding. They are known to hide in furniture as well as clothing to do so. Once they find the next location they can take hold quickly multiplying at alarming rates to reach infestation levels. They are very small and good at hiding, which makes them rather difficult to get rid of once the have taken hold.

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