Hello there, and welcome to the gripe and complaint department of my little blog. It seems I needed to get more things off my chest than I ever imagined I did. Even if no one reads them, I feel better for having written it. Again, cheap therapy. Today’s complaint comes to us from Greg in Gwinnett County, Georgia. Greg writes:

The county I live in (Gwinnett County) is generally a good place to live as is evidenced by its ever exploding population over the past 10 years or so. They have an amazing parks department and do more to keep the roads in shape and growing them to match need than I would have thought possible. Up until recently I had not one complaint about the county as a whole but all that changed back in early November so today’s saga actually began well over a month ago.

Gwinnett County is one of those places where garbage collection is not a county provided service. Each resident contracts with a waste management service of their choice and that service handles their garbage collection. And the system is (or rather was) working fine and has been for many years. Unfortunately it seems that a few thousand of our million plus residents elect to dump their trash illegally rather than pay for waste service. More unfortunately the county elected to deal with this in a most draconian way.

The county, in it’s infinite wisdom (that was sarcasm, in case it isn’t evident already) decided to hand control of how waste collection is handled to a non-profit group called Gwinnett Clean and Beautiful (hereafter referred to as GCB) and they, in turn, decided that the well established system wasn’t working in spite of all evidence to the contrary. So they decided to completely change how we will handle our trash.

They put out for bid the right to be the sole waste management for the entire county. Well, technically they were looking for two to equally split the geographic territory. So, to put things in perspective, they were going to throw out the perhaps 30 services currently competing for my business and award a monopoly to one that would now handle my entire area. In the process they would be driving most of the small companies that account for the bulk of those 30 completely out of business. Oh, and the cost would be higher per month and they are upping the number of recycled items from 9 to 27, and they will be enforcing it; that is, recycling will no longer be optional. While I think recycling is a good thing, and we happen to recycle everything on the current list of 9 I don’t like being told that I have to and I certainly don’t like the idea of someone going through my trash to see if I’m being a good boy or not.

So, when I heard all of that back in November I was disgusted but there wasn’t a lot I could do about it so I resigned that I would just have to deal with it. That was then. Since then I’ve learned that my current carrier, Atlanta Waste Industries (AWI), is charging all of their customers a fee of $23.50 to “cover the costs of collecting cans and winding down operations as they close the local office.” Now, I didn’t ask them to close that office and I didn’t terminate service with them so I’m not exactly sure where they think their cost of doing business is my problem. So, with that, there is exactly zero chance I will ever pay that fee. Let them sue me for it. I dare ‘em. The county is saying they are going to keep their 150,000 security bond if they charge the fee, but that is a mere pittance compared to what they will collect from those dumb enough to actually pay it.

So, I’m already irritated about that when, last Thursday (trash day) I come home to find my trash can has disappeared. I mention it to Christy who tells me that AWI came by and picked up the can, trash and all. She happened to be outside at the time and the guy told her that they were picking them up as part of the cut-over and that the new service would be dropping a can off in “a couple of days.” Well, as a couple of days passed then a couple of more I began to wonder where the new can was. My curiosity was heightened even more by the smell of the garbage that was now piling up in our garage for lack of anywhere else to put it. With that in mind I called the GCB offices yesterday to inquire where my can was. Their answer? “Oh, we have until the middle of January to get you a can.” Let me repeat that: they will have me a can by the middle of January; my existing can was taken on December 11th. Now I’m no math wizard, but it looks an awful lot like they are telling me I will be collecting 5 weeks of trash in my garage. I can hardly wait!

When I explained to GCB that my can had already been gone a week they told me that it wasn’t their fault; AWI was supposed to leave the can until the end of the year and that I should call them about it. I noted to them that AWI and I never had any issue until they inserted themselves into the middle of my business and hung up. Then I called AWI. And listened to a looped message telling me they were experiencing high call volume and that I should click on the Gwinnett county link on their site. I did so and it only explained whey they thought I owed them the $23.50 they’ll never see. After two hours of that same loop I began to get a sense that they weren’t gonna answer. A little searching on the net revealed that they had, in fact, stopped actually answering their phone.

I was further irritated when I realized that I had pre-paid AWI for service through the end of the year. You pay every quarter for the coming three months. So AWI had messed me over by taking my can early and lying to me about why and GCB had messed me over by starting this mess to begin with. Great.

So here I sit now with garbage piling up ever higher in my garage and with the smell you might expect increasing with it and no one wants to take responsibility for it. My big problem now is in deciding whose steps I will be dropping my garbage off on for the next 4 weeks; AWI of GCB. I am currently leaning toward splitting it evenly and delivering half to each. I’ll let you know when I decide. grrrrrr.

/g

Update: We got a call from AWI on the 22nd with a recording telling us they’d won a temporary injunction against the new plan so they would remain our carrier (that’s what they think) and to carry on as usual. I called them on the 23rd to inquire as to when we might expect a trash can again. They brought one out on the 26th. Of course, it was a used one that they hadn’t bothered to clean (nor had the previous users ever cleaned it from the looks of it) so it smelled like 6 day old roadkill skunk in August. They actually deigned to pick it up today (Jan 2nd), 3 weeks and a day after the last pickup. That they’ve shown so little regard for me as a customer and have shown themselves to be the only trash carrier in the area to happily slap a charge on my bill for arbitrary reasons, I’m done with ‘em. I’ll be starting with a new carrier next week. They can come get their smelly can and do whatever they want with it. At least my garage can begin to detoxify now. Sheesh.