I wish there were a clear and easy way to identify these small services owned by PE, who often go out of their way to avoid people finding out.

Usually I find out by noticing symptoms of worsening quality, costs increasing more than I might expect, ramp up in aggressive cross selling of services and subscriptions, shifting to call services that are clearly not local and know nothing of our area, etc.

In some cases I'll get an employee that knows the situation and let's spill the PE sale and then I need to find a new service provider.

My new pest control folks sold me partly by showing customer satisfaction numbers from independent third-party review sites. The sales guy made the point that their customer satisfaction had stayed high after their PE buyout, but my old service had gone downhill since their PE buyout.

Indeed, a good example Private Equity is (in the UK) buying out all the small vet practices or small groups of practices.

With the expected outcome when those vampires touch anything.

I agree, nowadays is impossible to hide, but maybe they are still invisible to most people outside our bubble