$1,400 for bait stations and the guy never once looked at where your downspout was dumping? That's the part that gets me. Three weeks for tubes to dry up after sixty bucks of gutter extenders tells you the whole story right there. I'd still get a second opinion from a different termite outfit, one that actually pokes around the foundation before quoting you, but the Ace counter guy sounds like he's seen this rodeo a hundred times.

The isolation gets them first, then the money follows.

Try flipping it around though. Maybe the guy with the fishing forum is exactly who you should trust more, not less. A random Nebraska angler has no grant money, no tenure to lose, no brand deal with a shadow-measuring company, so what's his angle? Meanwhile plenty of slick channels with real science degrees are funded by groups that already know what answer they want, and the production quality is just there to make it feel solid. Half the "trusted" explainer channels out there are run by the same three media companies repackaging the same script. So maybe judging by voice and polish is dumb, sure, but judging by credentials is just a different shortcut that fails the same way.