bin problems

I was so pleased with my brown bin for garden waste.  It was emptied once a fortnight, and while that wasn't enough to eliminate trips to the dump, it cut them down to a level where I felt less paranoid about being challenged with having a gardening round, and saved some time driving to Clacton and back.  I was so happy with it, in fact, I began to wonder if I should invest in a second and see if I could do away with regular trips to the dump entirely.  Then last week it wasn't emptied.

I didn't immediately notice.  The weather's been cold, I haven't been well, and I had no cause to refill it, but then I looked inside when I went down to the gate on Saturday to collect the red bin (paper) and the food waste bin, and it was still full of weeds and moss.  Or at least, not quite full.  The contents had settled, and there would have been room for another half a bag of garden detritus, if I'd had the energy to take it down, but I hadn't.

The brown bins are emptied fortnightly, not weekly, and are normally done on the same cycle as paper, except that everything was thrown out of synch over Christmas.  The leaflet setting out my garden waste collection days is somewhere in the mess on my desk, tidying which is one of those things (along with my tax return) that I'd have been getting on with if I didn't have a stinking cold, but while I knew they were due to miss one collection over Christmas, I had a strong feeling that by last week things were supposed to be back to normal.

I looked on the council website, which offered a choice between a telephone number and an online form to report missed waste collections, but nobody was answering the phone on a Saturday morning, and the online form didn't have a box to tick for brown bins.  Red boxes, green boxes, food waste, missed black bags, not garden waste.  I did my best with the form and gave up worrying about the brown bin, and so did whoever processes the online forms, because I never heard anything about it.  This morning I remembered it again, so tottered down the drive to have a look, but the bin hadn't been emptied.  In fact, there'd have been room for slightly more than half an extra bag of weeds, if I'd had the energy, which I hadn't.

I rang Veolia, who have the contract for domestic waste in Tendring, and spoke to a polite woman who seemed rather vague herself about when brown bin collections should have resumed, and slightly fixated on where I had left the bin (in exactly the same place as it has been left ever since we first got it), but eventually said something about a trainee or unfamiliar driver on the route, and promised to report it.  I made the mistake of mentioning about the online form not having a box for missed brown bin collections.  Quick as the sound of Our Ginger knocking the TV remote control off a table came back her response.  That was the council's website, nothing to do with Veolia.

Oh Tendring District Council and Veolia, this is where outsourcing breaks down at the customer service level.  Your residents, council tax payers and supplementary green waste collection levy payers do not know where one remit ceases and the other begins.  We use the point of contact we are given, the council website, and the forms and telephone numbers on it, to try and resolve issues to do with our bins.  It is up to you to sort it out between you.  Telling a (paying) customer that they will have to take it up with the other lot is never the right answer.

She did then agree that she would email the relevant department at the council about updating the form (which was the correct answer whether she meant to or not), and later this afternoon I had a phone call from Veolia apologising for the missed collection and saying it would be done tomorrow. I'm not sure if that was in response to the original form, or today's call, or if it means the problem has been logged twice.  Whatever, Veolia and the council will have to sort it out between them.