Structural pest control licensing
Is your exterminator licensed in Tennessee?
Tennessee uses its own vocabulary: the business permit is called a CHARTER, issued under the Tennessee Application of Pesticides Act, and any company providing or offering custom pesticide application must hold one. The critical detail is that a charter is required FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL LOCATION — the department’s own example is that a company with offices in Nashville and Memphis needs a separate charter for each. So ask which office your crew is dispatched from and whether that office holds its own charter; a firm chartered in one city is not thereby chartered in another. Pair this with the Tennessee law page, where the landlord-tenant act only applies in the larger counties — in much of the state the license check is more useful leverage than the statute.
- Who regulates it
- TDA
- Verification
- Online
- Check before paying
- The business license
The regulator
The credential to look for
Open the official Tennessee search →
Renting in Tennessee? Before you pay for treatment, check whether your landlord is legally responsible for the cost. Tennessee bed bug law →
What to verify, in order
The business license, not just the technician
Most states license the company and certify the individual separately. A certified technician working for an unlicensed business is still an unlicensed job.
The category or phase covers structural work
Licenses are issued by category. An applicator certified for turf and ornamental has no business in your bedroom.
Status is active, not lapsed
Some state databases exclude cancelled licenses from results entirely, so a revoked company returns the same empty result as a typo. If you get nothing, phone the agency before assuming you mistyped.
Complaint and enforcement history
Where a state publishes disciplinary actions they are usually on the board site rather than inside the license search.
Link last confirmed: . State license portals migrate often and licenses lapse daily — treat anything older than a few months as a starting point, not an answer.
Always confirm on the state's own site. This page points at the official database; it does not mirror or cache license records. Status changes daily and only the issuing agency is authoritative.