Fighting Waste Management's stupid "Smart Trucks"

[Greg Scott]

This year Waste Management implemented "Smart Trucks".  Basically each truck takes pictures with GPS locations and time stamp of every pickup.  Somebody sitting at a computer in a far-away place then decides if your dumpster was properly filled.  If that person decides it isn't, WM sends you a picture like the one below and charges you an "overage fee".  Typically the overage fee we have seen is $220 per incident.  If my employees filled the dumpster, that would not be a problem, but in an apartment complex, all kinds of things get shoved into our dumpsters.

Starting about July, Waste Management started hitting one of our apartments with these fees and our trash collection bills more than doubled.  We protested the charges and were denied.  Since we were on a month-to-month contract, we simply hired another company and terminated our relationship with Waste Management.  The hardest part was finding another company to come in on a timely basis since most apartments in our city were also leaving WM.

Sadly, we have another property in the middle of a 5-year contract with Waste Management.  In August, we started getting hit with those same fees.  This time we paid our lawyer to look at our contract and tell us what to do.  (Totally worth the cost.)  We now contest every charge, point out the terms of the contract that allow us to contest the charges and demand they be removed or we will terminate our contract.  So far they have been removed.

This has been a huge waste of our time and effort.  I'm searching for that moment that I can find WM in breach of contract so I can terminate our relationship with them permanently.

Anybody else have any WM stories or know how to reach someone in their senior management?