Advanced Disposal

When we hired Parker Sanitation they were a small family owned company, who was willing to work with us, seemed to take care of their customers and employes.The trash service ran like clock work, no problems or issues of any kind. It was about a year or two later that a huge campaign was launched on television and radio explaining that they were one of the only local companies left in Bay County Fl; this add campaign was huge, seeming far above the budget of a small family owned business. Then a few months after the ad campaign began it ended and notice came in the mail that Parker Sanitation had been bought by Veolia Environmental Services, yet would continue under the Parker Sanitation name, this is the point where things began to go down hill. Shortly after Veolia Environmental took over surcharges began appearing on the bill, the first was a fuel surcharge, five dollars added to our bill. Now there are a few thoughts that most people don't think about: first is how many pickups can a compactor truck squeeze into a truck, how much fuel does the truck actually hold, when a large company puts in a bulk fuel bid to maintain their own fuel pumps at a cost considerable less than what we pay at a gas station, how much do they actually pay per gallon and why doesn't the fuel charge fluctuate with the rising and falling of fuel prices. This is exactly what the class action law suit was about, the excessive fuel surcharge. So let's go back to school for a minute if a truck holds 200 gallons of fuel and the price for that diesel fuel goes up 50 cents the added cost to fill the truck is $100 . For a bit of reality on this fuel surcharge I'm adding a cut and paste from Pete Griffit found on line on the website Answers "The truck I drive is a 2005 Mack LE600 with a McNeilus 32 cubic yard packing body and I average weights ranging from 14.5 tons (multiple bulky items) to 18 tons (little or no bulky items). The most weight I have put on this truck in one shot is 21.74 tons." One ton is 2,000 pounds so this truck holds 29,000 pounds of garbage that means the truck can service 290 homes if your garbage weighs 100 pounds. Calculated at 290 customers with 100 pound cans, the increase in revenue from the fuel surcharges is $1450.00 per truck for every rout it makes. It was well over a year ago that the county incinerator caught fire and was temporarily closed, during this time an Alternative Facility surcharge was added to our bill, oddly enough the county landfill is much closer than the incinerator. Again a $5 surcharge was added in addition to that fuel surcharge making it total of $10 in added charges above the price of the bill. The Bay County Landfill had a price hike on the tipping fees, this is the fee charged by the ton to dump garbage. After seeing the raise in the cost of my bill, I inquired as to why; Parker told me that it was because the landfill had raised their prices. I inquired with Bay County Solid Waste, who runs the landfill as to the cost increase and to Parker Sanitations claim, it was true the price had gone up, it went up just a couple of dollars per truck, The increase in my bill alone covered the increase in tipping fees for the entire truck. After Viola took over we received a form in the mail that had a drawing on it asking us to mark the location of where we wanted to have our garbage picked up. Looking a bit closer we noticed it was a contract and by marking the location and signing the bottom locked you into a contract. My wife and I refused to sign the contract, when we had just simply had it with Parker Sanitation and told them to cancel our service we were told we had a contract and it would have to be reviewed by a supervisor named Chris. After contacting the office several days in a row a manager named Chris finally returned our calls and told me he would have to review our contract. Later that day he called back and told me exactly what I had told him, that we had no contract. Service was canceled. Even after it was canceled we still received yet another bill containing an Alternative Disposal Facility surcharge, I did not pay this bill, then another one came with a late payment penalty called an administrative charge, at this point I don?t even have garbage service with this company any more. I just went ahead and paid the bill with an additional $20 and a note to close our account and refund any excess money, just to get Parker Sanitation out of my hair. Well that was the last I had heard from them, six months went by and still no refund. I called Parker sanitation and was informed that it could be up to six weeks before I would see a refund of payment in excess, I informed the lady I had already been waiting six months. She told me that she didn?t understand why we hadn?t gotten a refund and that she would take care of it, and she did. The check came form Advanced Disposal; Parker Sanitation had been sold again. To add insult to injury with Parker Sanitation, shortly after a new driver was hired I installed two street or post lamps with motion detectors coming up our driveway, three days after the one closest to the trash was installed and working it was hit by Parker Sanitation?s truck. I took many photos of the damage and tire tracks then called the company. They sent a supervisor, I believe his name was Brian, however can tell you he drove a red van when he came out to investigate the accident. After he left the tire tracks I had already taken photos of were gone, brushed away. Later I was informed that there was no way for him to be sure his truck hit the post because any number of vehicles could have come down our driveway and that the trash was in a dangerous location. I informed him that we had an electric gate requiring a code or remote to open and that his drivers code was used to open the gate. At this point I met the truck at 5 am and took photos of the truck, tires, measured the point of impact height to match the lifting arm and took photos of that as well, then I printed the photos of the disappearing tire tracks, the matching truck tires, impact points and damage and sent them to Parker Sanitation along with a letter asking why suddenly was this a dangerous location, the trash had been picked up in that location for years and why it had suddenly become dangerous after a automatic street lamp was installed off the side of the driveway to light the area. There was never a response to my letter. Later when I was canceling our service this came up and Chris found no record of an accident on our account. He gave me his e-mail so I could forward the information to him. I sent 11 e-mails due to the size of the photos and a copy of the letters I had sent, again no response as to the damage caused by their truck. I believe Parker Sanitation is a dirty, dishonest company and from the notices I have received from class action lawsuits against their parent company Vieola, now Advansed Sanitation, I?m pretty sure I?m not the only one with this view. The class action lawsuits are in regards to surcharges. In my opinion, they are not only dirty for the numerous and excessive surcharges, but the grossly disproportionate price hike they blamed on Bay county, tricking customers to sign contracts as if it were a diagram of where to have the garbage picked up, failure to provide refunds in a timely manner, tampering with accident evidence, failure to take care of financial obligations following an accident resulting in property damage.

Initially I started using them because of the price. I pay them a monthly fee. They are definitely consistent and I have not had any issues where they didn’t pick up the garbage. Things do go wrong but I have never had them do that and they picked it up on the days they were supposed to and on time. There is very little difference between the prices of the people around here. There are some places that after they have picked the garbage there is some left behind but I have not come across that with them. I have never had any issues with the billing or anything.