East Hampton Village police stopped a 19-year-old from Bayville on Lily Pond Lane on the evening of Aug. 21 after receiving multiple complaints that he had been “attempting to distribute handbills,” and “entering private yards and porches” to advertise the services of a business called EcoShield Pest Solutions.
Similar reports have been appearing regularly in the police logs since June, but the volume of complaints increased in the run-up to Labor Day, all following the same fact pattern: a young man, dressed in black, wearing either a shirt or lightweight jacket branded with the name “Ecoshield,” often on an electric scooter, traveling door to door trying to get residents to sign up for the extermination service.
The complaints have little to do with the actual service being advertised — which is headquartered in Hicksville, and employs real service technicians, who have received generally favorable reviews from customers online — but rather with the company’s sales representatives, who are hired and trained by an affiliated company called Shield Marketing. A third company, Shield Management, develops “best-practice protocols and procedures” for the 36 local pest control offices, which are located in 27 states throughout the country, according to the Shield Companies umbrella website.
The website of Shield Marketing’s New York City office, which handles sales for the Hicksville office’s services, states that its first-year sales representatives earn an average of “$35k within four months” — though it does not directly state that the pay is entirely commission-based. It advertises such incentives as free, convenient housing for the duration of the sales season, which runs from mid-April through the end of August, and company trips to exotic locales, like a stay in Bali for the office’s top earners last year, the subject of a short video on the page set to a Kanye West song, which includes clips of young men dancing on a yacht and riding A.T.V.s through the mud in a tropical forest.
“It felt more like he was casing the neighborhood than there to offer a legitimate service,” recalled a Springs resident, who received a visit from a persistent scooter-riding sales representative on Aug. 22. He knocked on her door, and when she came to meet him, told her he was doing work in the area, naming a neighbor she didn’t know. The day before her mother had been visited by the same salesman two miles away. In each case, the script was similar.
Another representative was reported “requesting residents’ credit card information” on King’s Point Road in Springs a few days later, and another report came from a homeowner on South Forrest Street in Montauk, who told police that a representative had approached her residence, stating that he was “exterminating the area for mice.” He had taken off on his scooter when she confronted him.
The company’s business practices, including the sales tactics, are now the subject of a nationwide class action lawsuit that was filed in District Court in Arizona in June, which includes all three affiliated companies, and the umbrella company, as defendants.
The complaint, which was filed by the firms Perez Law Group of Arizona, Gianaris Trial Lawyers of Illinois, and Simmons Hanly Conroy of New York City, alleges that the company uses “fraudulent, unfair, and deceptive business practices” to pressure customers to sign long-term contracts with “costly cancellation fees disguised as discounts,” and is asking the court for injunctive relief to prevent similar conduct in the future, as well as for compensatory and punitive damages for defrauded consumers across the country.
Two Illinois residents included as class representatives outline their experiences signing up for the company’s services, in the summers of 2023 and 2024 respectively, the beginnings of which echo local complaints — sales representatives in branded attire, stating that they were servicing homes in the area — but both also describe being pressured into signing contracts through the offer of a time-sensitive discount, which they later learned was available to all new customers.
Neither was informed that they had three days to cancel the contract, a requirement under federal law, and both were charged the amount of the initial “discount” as a cancellation fee, which the company allegedly referred to a debt collection agency after one of the men refused to pay. The suit is still pending final approval by the court to certify it as a class action, and Gianaris Trial Lawyers, one of the plaintiff firms, is advertising free consultations for former customers who may be eligible to join the lawsuit as part of the class.
The four-month term of summer sales representatives technically ended on Monday, with the onset of September, which should equate to a dropoff in reports at least until next May — assuming that the business practices do not change substantially between now and then.
The Shield Marketing New York City website was updated this week to reflect the seasonal change. “We’re Hiring for Summer 2026” is now written across the home page, accompanied by a bright green box that says “apply here.”
