Recycling pickup was spotty throughout the Suncrest neighborhood on Friday. Some bins were emptied; others were not, seemingly without rhyme or reason.
That’s likely because there was a substitute recycling driver that day, but only a fraction of Republic Services customers knew it. Some people got text messages letting them know. Others turned to the hive-mind of social media and neighborhood Facebook groups to find out why their recycling hadn’t been collected. Still others were left in the dark, wondering when — or even if — someone would ever come by to empty the big green bin.
But if you didn’t get that text message, or hadn’t seen it on social media, then you wouldn’t have known that you had to email morgantownwvmuni@republicservices.com “if you have any service issues” — like getting someone to come back to empty your missed bin.
That’s just (sub)par for the course for Republic.
But Friday’s lapse has nothing on what one of our staff members experienced this fall.
Republic missed their recycling bin, so they called Republic and requested someone come back for it. Republic said it would send someone right out. No one showed up. The same thing happened for the next two days.
So our staff member called the City of Morgantown and was connected to the person who handles the Republic complaints. That kind woman called Republic, asked for the recycling bin to be emptied and was told someone would get it the next day.
The next afternoon, the bin had still not been emptied, so our staffer called the city again and spoke to the same woman. She said Republic had called her and told her that the bin had been taken care of. Our staffer informed her that it had not, in fact, been taken care of.
This happened several more times, with the woman from the city calling Republic and Republic telling her each time the recycling had been picked up at that location, when, indeed, it hadn’t been.
The overflowing bin was finally emptied on the next regularly scheduled pickup day — one week after our staffer first requested service.
Renewing Republic’s contract was a huge mistake.
Unfortunately, we doubt the city can break that contract without incurring steep financial penalties for itself. But it can enforce the contract’s existing penalties against Republic.
In July, the city levied two $100 fines for pickups before 6 a.m. As far as we can tell, those were the only penalties this year. None for leaving can lids open in the rain. None for missed pickups. None for lying to the city about missed pickups.
Obviously, Republic isn’t motivated by public criticism and general outrage. But maybe chipping away at its bottom line will convince it to clean up its act.
For that to work, we have to make sure Morgantown has all the appropriate evidence, so next time Republic messes up, don’t just call Republic to complain — call the city, too, at 304-225-4213 or report it on the Morgantown 311 app.
