Trapper John

We had a horrible experience with Trapper John’s Critter Gitter (Note: owner changed the name and location of his business on this Unilocal page to try and avoid this negative review; the name of this business is Trapper John’s Critter Gitter, not Animal Trapper, and it is located in Tracy, CA., not Livermore, CA.; it was changed after we posted this review; previously, he changed the name to Critters and location to San Francisco after this review was posted; he also posted a fake 5-​star review using his own personal Unilocal account, John M.; how pathetic is that; this should tell you a lot about the business owner’s dishonesty, which we have had to deal with; Unilocal removed his fake review since it violated their terms of agreement; thank you Unilocal!). We contacted them due to some raccoons tearing up our lawn at one of our rental homes. John, the owner, told us that he would apply granules and spray the lawns and that he could guarantee that they would be gone. He told us to be at our rentals at 5 PM to pay him for the service. When we arrived, it didn’t seem like he had done any work. Our tenants told us that they didn’t see him do any work. Still, we paid him.
The next day, the raccoons were back and tore up our lawn again. So, once again, we called him and he told us that it was due to us watering the lawn, which he had told us the day before we needed to do so the granules would seep into the roots. He said that he would come out to spray again but we would have to pay him to come out the next time. When we asked him if we could meet him there when he applied the granules and spray, he argued with us and asked if we didn’t trust him. He then hung up on us.
We went to Ace Hardware, bought some granules, applied it as instructed and the raccoon problem was solved. We called a few days later and asked him if he would give us a refund since he didn’t do a good job (if he actually did any work at all) and he started yelling obscenities at us. He even physically threatened us telling us the following: «If you were here right now, I would tear you to shreds». We were appalled and asked him where he learned such a lack professionalism. We warned him that that was a physical threat. He continued on a rampage of obscenities and we finally had to hang up on him.
He called back and said we were threatening him and that he was going to contact the police — most likely because he was nervous about the physical threat he had just given us. We asked him how we threatened him when we were simply asking if he would take responsibility for his poor work and give us a refund. This was absolutely bizarre. We asked him how he could just lie like that when he knows he had just physically threatened us and we had never once done the same to him. He admitted that he would be lying and said: «That’s just how it is».
We contacted the Tracy Police to report the owner for a physical threat and notified them that he said he was going to contact them and admitted he was going to lie about us threatening him since there never was a threat from us. We simply asked for a refund and he responded saying he would «tear us to shreds». The policeman said they hadn’t received a call from him but they would notify us if he did.
The owner is definitely unstable and we would not recommend anyone interact with him. He will tout his experience but his poor work results speak louder than his words. The more professional approach for him would have been to either give us a refund or just a simple explanation why he would not do so instead of verbally and physically threatening us and then making up a story that it was we who did so.
Not only are they incompetent but also unprofessional, rude and downright unethical.

John,
Knows the ins and outs of trapping. He gave me a price, gave me his word that he would rid my property of a racoon problem. He takes a lot of pride in his work and full of integrity. I will use him again when needed