Greyhound taking over Dublin City Council waste collection

Diyhelp said:
Who votes for these county council councilors and lets them act with impunity.
Click to expand...

I guess we all do. On the bright side, DCC refuse collectors weren't the greatest, not in my area anyway. It will be interesting to see how much crap gets left on the street by the new guys, before we all start harping on and crying about the good old days when the friendly corpo lads were cheerily taking our bins.
 
Looks like the situation around our way will remain as it was under DCC - no fixed annual charge and €3 per bag label on a pay as you go basis with Greyhound taking DCC labels until March (any unused labels can possibly be refunded by DCC). I generally only put out a bag about once a month. Green bag collected every two weeks or so. No brown bin/bag but I don't mind since I compost what I can anyway.
 
Press release from Greyhound:
Greyhound responds to Dublin city customers with instalment pay plan Greyhound Recycling and Recovery customers struggling to pay their €100 Annual Service Charge in Dublin city now have the option of paying the charge in two instalments. The company has announced that customers can now opt to pay €50 up front and to defer the second payment of €50 until 1st July 2012 if they sign up to become Automatic Top Up customers before February 15th. Customers who chose not to sign up to the Automatic Top Up easy pay service must pay the €100 Annual service in full by 15th February 2012 and also put their account in credit to meet bin lift costs in order to maintain their Greyhound bin collection service after that date. Customers wishing to pay the €100 Annual Service Charge in two instalments by signing up to the Automatic Top Up offer can do so by visiting www.greyhound.ie or by returning the sign-up form attached to their invoice. The offer closes on 15th February 2012. “We have listened to the concerns expressed by our customers across the city and we have also heard the views voiced by the members of Dublin City Council on behalf of constituents,” said Michael Buckley, joint Founder and CEO of Greyhound Recycling and Recovery. “We understand that many households are financially constrained and struggling to pay bills. The Automatic Top Up service is the only option open to Greyhound customers to alleviate any difficulties in meeting the €100 Annual Service cost and to maintain a bin collection service,” he said. “Greyhound Recycling and Recovery has already committed to honouring the waiver scheme for 33,000 customers, to maintaining the €100 Annual Service Charge for 2012 and to keeping bin lift fees at their current rates up to at least July of this year,” Mr. Buckley continued. “Greyhound Recycling and Recovery is the most competitively priced operator in the Dublin market,” he added. The company confirmed that it had consulted with officials at Dublin City Council on its proposals to respond to the concerns of customers regarding the pre-paid model that it operates. ENDS
 
As I mentioned above in our area were were always on a pay as you go/no annual fee bag system - €3 per bag label (and it's gas to see how far some people have sometimes tried to go with the size of the bag! ). I don't know if this option is open to anybody or just in specific areas (which seem to be mostly city centre or thereabouts where there space for wheelie bins is at a premium)?
 

They're joking, right? The "only option" to paying €100 in one go is to be forced to use a top-up option? Two installments is the best that can be done? By the way, presumably this option is only available to people with credit/laser cards.
 
Well we had our first Greyhound collection the other day. Black and brown bins to be collected on the same day. They only collected the black ones. Rang this morning to let them know. "We'll send someone out today" said the lad on the phone (after I listened to a few minutes of recorded messages. He was about to hang up when I asked "Do you want to know where I live?"
 
I have grave concerns over this if Greyhound has useless security for customer details, if this is true as it could easily be abused for "Phishing" attacks!!!

[broken link removed]
"The Irish Times was able to log on to a customer account yesterday and to retrieve details, including account balance, invoices, name, address and payment history, using only the information printed on one of the cards."
 
Did anyone hear if anything useful came out of the special meeting of DCC councillors last Monday? Is there any chance DCC will be made redo the tender or at least force Greyhound to roll back on the prepay element?

Also did anyone successfully find an alternative company willing to take you on as a customer?

I emailed the councillors in my area before this meeting and I got instant replies from 2 of the 4 I emailed, another emailed me the following day. One of them was a personal response i.e he addressed my concerns directly and didn't just send me a pre-typed generic response to the situation that I'm guessing everyone who contacted them got. He asked for more details and came back to me a number of times with developments (like the special meeting) but he has been silent since that meeting! I left it a few days to see if the papers or news reported on it but I didn't see much in the papers or on this forum.

I don't want to keep emailing him but if I can't get the information myself I plan to email him for an update soon.
 
I must say, I'm totally ticked off at the moment.

I don't like the payment options at all. I want to know how much money they are taking from me, for how many lifts etc the way the Corpo did. They can't do that, they tell me. I can pay in advance, and they'll send me an email or text message to tell me when I start running out. I don't want a text or email - I get about 20 of each a day and once it slips down, it slips out of my mind. Greyhound, Thorntons and Oxygen* all process the money the same way - strangely enough... weird

Secondly, just how environmentally friendly is it to have 3 different companies' trucks up and down the street every second day? Never mind having bins out every other day - the path will never be clear.

Yes, I've written to my city councillors about this.



*Oxygen don't deal with smaller black bins, which is what I have.
 
Last edited:

Did they ever collect that brown bin?

I'm in a similar situation - back bin collected yesterday, but not brown.

"A 72-hour backlog" I'm told when I rang (three weeks after starting????).

They also dropped a new collection schedule in through the letterbox yesterday for "clarification". It's different from the previous one, which is still on their Web site. They're ringing back about that one (ha!).

I notice that according to their Web site they have "Innovative Customer Communication". Well, they're 100% right on that one: it's quite an innovation to change your story with every communication.......
 


Like Brendan, I also stayed with DCC out of principle, so am doubly annoyed about the handover to Greyhound. Nothing seamless about it- no advance warning, and no notification we would have to pay in advance etc etc!

However as I take a different view on incineration (see our address!) another significant change is the move from alternate week brown and black collections, to just fortnightly collections of both bins on the same day.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I suspect that many people may be inclined just put more stuff in the black bin, make less use of the brown bin...and hence help to deliver the additional rubbish required to fuel the proposed incinerator....?
 
I dont like the idea of paying 12 months in advance but only knowing what the fee is for the next 6 months. Would have thought this is in breach of consumer rights. For example, if they raise their price after 6 months and I decide to leave them, do I get my 6 month prepaid balance back? Doubt it. Starting to wonder why I pay tax.
 
I have about 25 black bag tags from DCC in my office (I totally over-ordered). I wonder could I just put my black bin rubbish into bags, tag them, and have them collected from in from of the house? Does anyone know?
 
Sandymount4 said:
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I suspect that many people may be inclined just put more stuff in the black bin, make less use of the brown bin...and hence help to deliver the additional rubbish required to fuel the proposed incinerator....?
Click to expand...

Eh? Why would they do that? The brown bin change is significantly lower than black bin.
 
I begrudgingly signed up for the automatic top up this morning so I could avail of the 'offer' of only having to pay half the annual charge up front.

I went through the screens, entered my details etc and processed the payment. It was only after it accepted my visa debit card that it told me it deducted €72. I was only expecting it to take €62 (€50 standing charge and €12 automatic top up).

They topped up my account by €22. Has this happened to anyone else? I have emailed them asking them to refund the additional €10 but I have yet to hear back from them.
 

signed up today. not sure how you managed to 'overpay' as the amount box is blank. i entered in 64 (50 + 6 x 2 + 2) and thats what was processed.
then i hear rte radio saying that Greyhound have questions to answer over their finances and whether the company has overreached and thus is in trouble- they were'nt answering questions!!!
 
As far as I know I only signed up to pay the standing charge of €50 and then I went down to the Automatic Top Up Grid and ticked the lowest amount possible i.e. €12. Unless some other box had €10 in it and I didn't notice ...

As you would expect I haven't had a reply as yet!
 
I have a house in a Dublin City Council area and they have failed to deliver the clear plastic bags for the recycling over the last 4 weeks. Can someone update me regarding this as DCC used to always deliver them on time etc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register