PHOENIX — A Valley woman was searching for answers about her recycling bin pickup when she couldn't get any. 'Let ABC15 Know' picked up the problem.
Doris R. wanted an explanation from the City of Phoenix about why her recycling bins were not being picked up on the scheduled day in her Laveen neighborhood.
The resident said the problem had happened at least three times, and when she called to report the issue, she said it didn’t go very far.
Doris reached out to Let ABC15 Know.
In her email message, she said, “We continually have a problem with the city of Phoenix not picking up our (recycled) garbage. This problem has persisted over three times. I feel that the city does not tolerate me not paying my bill yet. I do not get the service I’m paying for. Please, if you can help with this issue, I would greatly appreciate it.”
Doris R., we understand.
The Let ABC15 Know team reached out to the City of Phoenix, Public Works Department. The spokesperson released the following statement:
"On Thursday, August 28th, our driver missed collecting recycling containers on the street, though that route was otherwise collected as scheduled. On Friday, August 29th, a resident reported a missed container, and by Monday, September 1st, we dispatched a driver to pick up all missed recycling bins. We typically request one to two business days for missed collections. Our GPS tracking system confirmed our presence in the neighborhood at 1:22 pm on September 1st. It appears the resident had moved their container back because of HOA concerns (which prevented us from collecting it), but all of the other missed containers were successfully collected on September 1. On September 2, a specialist contacted Ms. Roberson and serviced the recycling bin at 2 pm.
There are various reasons containers get missed. Usually, it's something as simple as a new driver, unfamiliarity with a new route, or just plain human error. We acknowledge that such a large-scale operation is not free of errors, and we take responsibility for missed collections. Whenever they happen, we encourage solid waste customers to give us a call at 602-262-6251 so that we can make up their collection as quickly as possible (usually within 1 to 2 business days). To give you some perspective of our operation, we service 422,000 households. That means we collect 422,000 trash containers and 422,000 recycle containers each and every week. Therefore, each day we are servicing almost 169,000 containers. Our miss rate, which is far below 1%, is quite low for a city that provides nearly 3.4 million curbside collections every month.
As for the customer's claim that this has happened on multiple occasions, that is correct. Looking back several years in our records, we only found 4 reported missed collections at that address."
Let ABC15 Know did speak with Doris R. shortly after we contacted the Public Works Department, and we were able to confirm that a driver did come to collect her garbage recycling bin.
“I don’t know what you said or did, but a supervisor did come to my house and spoke with me. They also assured me it won’t happen again. I thank you so much for looking into this for me!” Doris R. said.
