Allied Waste

Recology sucks. the only good thing is that they have nice carts, but the service is horrible, you get snooty people on the phone and the garbage carts do not always empty properly, so you end up having to call them to pick up the garbage again.
They boosted our rates about 80% this year over what Allied Waste used to charge, so they can drive around in their fancy trucks (where they tout that they can use less people, just the driver alone), yet charge a huge premium.
Last time when my black garbage can did not get emptied, the lady on the phone asked me to go and LOOSEN up the garbage so that the machine will be able to dump the trash into their truck. Hey that’s YOUR job, not mine! why didn’t you design your carts better so all the crap can slide out and into your truck?
I wish we could go back to Allied Waste!

Not that they are going to 1. read this or 2. care Allied Waste is the WORST.
We live in HMB which has a high raccoon population. There new cans do not have locking lids and are constantly being tipped over and garbage strewn everywhere on trash day.
We put a bungie cord on the can to keep this from happening only to be told it’s not allowed. OH, and when we don’t do this and trash is everywhere Allied won’t pick up the ripped bags and trash that are everywhere.
Customer service has no motivation to help since their contract is with the city and we have no alternative.
If I could fire these guys and go with another provider I’d do it in a second.

Allied waste is a nightmare! The pick up guys do an ok job but trying to communicate with the people in the office is horrible. They delivered me a 96 gallon garbage can when I ordered a 20 gallon. On top of that they are charging me for it. Over $ 60.00 a month! There response is there out of the 20 gallon ones and so I will have to pay the higher price. WHAT??? A 20 gallon is a little over $ 10. And they want to bill you three months in advance now a $ 196,00. Who does that? They have charged me a $ 25.00 interruption fee because I didn’t pay the higher price.
Guaranteed if you call the office the supervisor is ALWAYS In a meeting and NEVER calls you back. I live in Half Moon Bay and if I had another choice I would be the first in line.

Awesome! Clean and organized now! Broken electronics, electronic batteries, rechargeable batteries, broken led lamps, light bulbs even yeah! Even take paper and cardboard we couldn’t stuff in our home recycle bin from a flooring project. Awesomeness. The bins are painted really cute now. I’ll have to find a reason to come again to retake pictures of the new spruced up site.

Recology took over garbage service in San Carlos if you could call it service.
I was excited to use the three can system, thought it would be good for everyone… But wait they don’t ever pick up all three cans contents
Almost every week when I return home from work, one can hasn’t been emptied. The phones there are closed by that time. I leave a message, they don’t call back. I call again, they say it wasn’t out at 6am. I put them out the night before everyweek, they say they’ll send a truck and it never shows. I have two weeks of trash, recyling over flowing by the time the truck comes the following pick up day.
They should be glad they are the only ones, cause they would have no customers if we had a choice!

If I could given them no stars I would. Their truck operator dumped my can into his truck on a Thursday (not the first time) and it took until lunchtime on the following Monday to get a new can. It took three calls from me and two emails from Redwood City public works which contracts with Recology. They may be nice on the phone but their follow through is abysmal. I will not bore you with all the details but it was maddening dealing with them. I hope they keep screwing up so Redwood City «dumps» them.
K.
Redwood Shores

Apparently they also go under the name Recology and took over San Mateo County from BFI. My bldg is a little off the street and I guess they don’t want to walk back and get our garbage! Now we have to make 1 – 2 calls a week to get our garbage picked up! They have to keep issuing a special ticket and we have gone 2 – 3 weeks at a time with no pickup or drag it to the curb ourselves. You can imagine the smell… not impressed at all. If BFI could do it they should be able to too!
***update After almost 5 months the garbage is now being picked up twice a week! Maybe issuing those tickets got expensive for them…

Recology… worst service EVER!!! this company totally sucks!!! We’ve called them several times regarding garbage not being picked up, new trash containers too small, etc. Today was our garbage pickup day. It’s midnight, our garbage is still sitting outside waiting to be picked up. The drivers of these recology trucks are complete idiots too. They pulll up in front of our house at 6am and sit there for a good 5 – 10 mins trying to figure out how to operate their truck to get it to pick up the garbage can. Go back to the old fashioned way, at least it worked and we had consistently good service. Recology sucks!!!

The driver dumped my Green Bin into his truck — not the contents of the Green Bin, the GREEN BIN ITSELF.
Now they won’t give me another one.
TERRIBLE service. I’ve contacted them 5 times now…

Allied Waste is not getting off to a good 2011.
This is the second week in a row that they have missed our pick up day. I called at least 5 times last week and so far this week 3 times. Our pick up last year was Mondays and now they changed it to Wednesdays. They have yet to pick up on a Wednesday. Today is Friday and still no pick up. They have lousy customer service and they just continue to say they will forward the request for missed pick up.

I have read the other negative reviews and certainly believe that they have an honest gripe with this company. However, in the few times I’ve had to call for service issues, the phone reps have always been pleasant to me. I recently called to have an extra pick-​up since our house sitter forgot to put out the weekly trash. The rep didn’t even wait for me to finish talking, she already had the extra pick-​up scheduled without a charge. Very fast service. I think customer service boils down to who answers the phone, hopefully AW will train ALL of its reps to give good customer service.

I’ve never thought twice about the quality of my garbage people in 30+ years of dealing with them. The norm is for garbagemen to just, well, take away the garbage. With these guys, you feel like you’re in an adversarial relationship. Cardboard not exactly the right size? It gets left behind. Payment a day late? The way we tell you you missed a payment is by leaving the can untouched for you to deal with. Not to mention it seems every week they mix up me and my neighbors cans. It feels like the DMV workers all switched jobs.

I am totally disabled as is my wife. We pay a service fee for the garbage men to go to the side of our house 18 feet from the curb to pick up.
They consistently don’t do it. I call and report this .They send out a pick up and then they wait a couple of weeks and do not pick up, again.
This last week they walked by the can and picked up the recycled and left the garbage again.
The office never apologizes. They just send someone out again.
I would have fired this company about 5 times by now BUT there is no one else who we can hire.
Their service stinks !!!

Worst trash/​recycling service ever!
Since moving to Burlingame apt Allied waste has been terrible.
— do not empty trash bins completely
— do not take recycling for more than 3 – 4 weeks (now realized from other reviews they only pickup every other week, well they must only come once a month for us at the most)
— living in apt building they suppose to return the bins and never do
We have called to report the above issues without any change. Also discovered they are suppose to pickup Thursdays.wrong.they never come on Thursdays. A couple weeks after our complaint call our landlord received a letter about cardboard not being properly broken down and would incur additional fees if it continues. That is totally not the case, there is no reason why our recycling should be overlooked other than they don’t pick it up and its piled up for several weeks.
Ridiculous, wish these uppity garbage boys would do their jobs!

Service was usually ok, but sometimes they leave items for no apparent reason. When we cut off service, they promised a refund check within 4 weeks. When I called about it 6 weeks later, they said they were processing it «today.» So obviously they wait until you call for your check before they process it — ridiculous!

Since BFI has become Allied Waste, I’ve had mixed feelings. MOST of the time the job is done right. But these last two incidents are less than 2 months apart. One time the worker refused to pick up my trash, letting me know by BANGING on my door at 7:30 in the am but not having the decency to see if I opened it. So when I went outside to see what was wrong he YELLED at me telling me,” I can’t pick this up, there’s too much dog hair & it will get in my face.” WTF? Dog Hair? How many other people have trash that is soooo much more disgusting than mine (I“m an avid recycler & food scraps are not part of my every day trash; no food no smell). His partner was obviously pissed at him about it. Then today he collects my trash and decides to throw my paper & cardboard recycling INTO THE TRASH! What is the point of writing «Paper & Cardboard» on the top of the lid & having a sticker on the side that says «RECYCLING» (that Allied Waste GAVE me mind you), if they’re not gonna do the job right???
We as San Carlos residents already had a fee increase due to the 2 year pilot program of putting out food waste into the yard waste bin for they now pick up the yard/​food waste every week due to the smell, etc. But to have to pay more for him to NOT do his job right is just annoying!

I have had so many problems with this company since they took over trash service in San Mateo.
Some examples:
–skipping my house if my can’s aren’t overstuffed and there are no lids on them
–not emptying cans all the way (mostly leaving the individually bagged dog poop really puts a bee in my bonnet)
–missing the scheduled twice annual pick ups
–leaving the receptacles in the street (I like to be able to park in front of my house without having to get out and move my cans on to the curb before I park)
I think they should refund some of my money when they screw up. They’d be paying me to take my trash.
Dear Allied Waste,
My phone calls to you will stop when your garbage collectors learn to flip EVERY can EVERY time they pick up. And I’d consider a holiday tip if all of the above was resolved. In the meantime, clean up your act because otherwise I will keep calling and you will have to keep coming back to my house to correct your sloppy work. And it’s not fast food, there’s no way to spit in my meal if you’re my garbage man and I complain about you.
Cheers!

I’ve been obsessing over what to write for my 100^th Unilocal review. Some have suggested that I write about Love, Golden Gate Park, Unilocal,or even family members.
It may seem odd that I’m writing about the garbage guys for a milestone review, but hey, they’re popular around here!
My son gets so excited every time he hears those trucks coming or spots one in the distance. We get several solid minutes of entertainment every time they come for trash and recycling.
These guys are nice and do a good job. I’m impressed that they work holidays or not.
My only suggestion for improvement would be if the office would accept automated credit card payments easy no-​hassle payments.
Thanks, guys! We appreciate you!

I am ALL for recycling — seriously — I’m like a recycling fanatic, to the point where the guy I’ve been dating just said: «It’s good to know that when I die, you’ll recycle me.» So you’d think I’d love the transfer station — but this is actually my least favorite recycling center of all the places i’ve ever taken stuff along the peninsula.
If you don’t mind waiting 15 minutes or so on the road in your vehicle full of recyclables, smelling the wafting odor of trash while you watch Allied Waste’s understaffed employees try to untangle the constant clusterf*ck of trash vehicles, separating them from the people who just want to go drop off their recyclables… this place is great.
The first time I dropped off my recyclables here, it was ok. I did have to wait in a very long line of garbage trucks and other vehicles but didn’t mind because I got a decent amount of money after I dropped my stuff off.
The second time, the guy who was weighing my stuff seemed lazy. He gave me just $ 20 for all my stuff and for some reason I felt suspicious that I was being jipped. When i think about the time it took me to take all that sh*t in, I realize, it was SO not worth it. I’d feel way better about leaving my CRV redeemable items in my curbside container, letting the poor old man who circles our block every Thursday pick them out.
Here’s the math: $ 20 for about 5 hours of separating, sorting, crushing, driving to borrow my friend’s pickup, hauling, and waiting in line. Not to mention the eyesore it was to look at all this recycling piling up outside my back door. And then subtract the cost of gas at 4 bucks a gallon. When you break it all down, I made about twice as much, per hour, when I was 15 and earning minimum wage working at McDonalds — in 1985. Minimum wage was $ 3.35 back then. NEVER… AGAIN.
Like I said, I’m all for recycling, and will continue to do curbside recycling and drop off items that can’t be recycled through curbside pickup (like styrofoam, juice cartons, cardboard, plastic bags, batteries and scrap metal) but I’m taking it to the Palo Alto recycling center. I gotta do it for the love of the planet — not for the chump change I’d get from the transfer station.
— — — —
Totally agree with Jessica G — on my last visit I have to say the guys there did come across with an attitude, like I’m lucky to be able to drop stuff off. Gimme a break. What happened to Rudy the NICE recycling guy?

They pay you for your glass, metal, & plastic bottles! With CRC prices the way they are, you can get a lot of money back. Just a half bag of bottles got me about 5 bucks. I thought that I would get a buck.
You can also drop off all the cardboard and newspapers that you want.
The line is not so long as unexpected. I didn’t expect to have to wait to dump junk.
There is an old appliance drop off point next door. You have to pay but its better than keeping that old dishwasher in the garage.
Although I haven’t obliged myself to it, I understand that you can junk computers, mattresses, old books, etc…
This is a godsend for anyone who doesn’t want to pack rat.