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It’s almost summer, and that means pest control salespeople are descending on Portland homes.
The one who crept up on this reporter’s Southeast Portland home was riding a hoverboard and offering an 80% discount on some unnamed “initiation fee.” He gave off the vibe of a college student, home for the summer, looking to make a few easy bucks before heading back to campus.
But, if the allegations in a series of lawsuits filed in Portland and Utah are any indication, the business is far seamier than its salespeople’s bright smiles might suggest.
According to a legal complaint filed Friday in Portland U.S. District Court, some pest control salespeople appear to operate more like gangs: They feud over territory and punish rivals through harassment campaigns.
The lawsuit was filed by EcoShield Pest Solutions, an Arizona-based firm. It alleges that a Utah company, Grit Marketing, along with two of its top salespeople have resorted to illegal practices to push out competition in the Portland market. Grit’s employees have been “perpetrating a slew of illegal behavior over the past several weeks,” it alleges.
Among the allegations: Grit’s employees stalked, threatened and physically attacked competing salespeople, lied to prospective customers and “engaged in bad-faith price discrimination and sold their clients’ services at a loss in order to drive [Eco]Shield out of the Portland Market.”
“Grit Marketing has just learned of this lawsuit, will investigate the claims made, and will vigorously defend itself and its sales professionals,” a Grit spokesperson said in a statement to WW.
Grit Marketing, founded in 2020, is not itself a pest control company. Instead, it employees salespeople who earn commissions going door to door selling the pest control services offered by other companies. It resembles, in certain ways, a multilevel marketing firm, where tenured salespeople earn a percentage of commissions from their “downline,” or team of people they recruit to help sell, the lawsuit alleges.
Not everyone wins. The Salt Like City Tribune reported in March that 18 Grit salespeople were suing the company over unpaid commissions.
But those who succeed can earn big. For example, the new federal lawsuit claims, a regional manager operating in Portland and named in the lawsuit, Zachary Seager, earned $7 million in a single year. A top seller on his team, Corbin Hansen, earned $80,000 in a single summer as a 17-year-old and was rewarded with an $80,000 Ford truck, the lawsuit adds. (Hansen is also named in the suit.)
But to do that, they resort to some unsavory tactics, the lawsuit says. Seager was caught on film, the suit alleges, pushing a competing seller and threatening to “go negative,” meaning he ”would lose money on the services sold,” to undercut the seller.
He boasted: “We already kicked out Insight [Pest Solutions], Brooks [Pest Control], Saela [Pest Control]—all those guys have moved market,” the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit also describes Grit employees confronting competitor salespeople and interrupting their pitches to customers. A female competitor claims she was stalked and ultimately purchased a rape whistle “to protect herself.”
Memorial Day was a particularly important sales event. “Seager described GRIT’s activities on Memorial Day, which he referred to as ‘The Rumble,’ and the combination of Rein energy drinks, Red Bull energy drinks, pre-workout supplements, Powerade, and dry ice that GRIT encourages its Team Members to drink before they are deployed to engage in [door to door] sales.”
Hansen earned over $17,000 that day, according to Grit’s Instagram account.
In an Instagram video from that day, the lawsuit alleges, “multiple GRIT Team Members are shown, their hands covered in blood or a red liquid intended to resemble it, pressing their palms onto a large white bedsheet to create a macabre banner of toxic brotherhood.”
The lawsuit is demanding over $1 million in damages.