Trash pickup delays, billing problems continue after Priority Waste acquires GFL

As Priority Waste continues to navigate their takeover of GFL Environmental, customers and Rochester Hills city officials told us they're still frustrated with service during the transition including trash pickup delays and billing.

Priority Waste completed the acquisition of GFL's residential contracts on July 1. They said the transition would take up to three months, as trucks needed to be updated and billing data needed to be audited.

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Two months in, Rochester Hills Mayor Bryan Barnett says service is still not where it needs to be.

"Every week, it's another issue," he said. "It's trouble with the trucks, it's trouble with manpower... there's always an issue and we're almost two months into this new contract, and it just continues to be a barrage of challenges and excuses."

An initial problem was timely trash pickups.

“It's supposed to happen like Wednesday mornings but sometimes, they happen Wednesday evenings now and even like Thursdays and stuff," Rochester Hills resident Harman Bains said.

While pick-up schedules have gotten better in some areas of the city, residents say now billing is a headache. Rochester Hills residents pay for trash pickup services out of pocket and Jamie Grundy had to help her 75-year-old mother with the new billing system online after being on auto-pay for years.

“She was trying to get stuff straightened out on the internet through their website and was just completely flustered, like almost in tears because she kept trying, trying, trying," Grundy said. "It wasn’t user friendly at all."

Priority Waste says residents need to re-sign up for auto pay even if they were using it prior. If residents received a paper bill but already paid through the remainder of the year, the paper bill should be ignored. If people had discounts on their bills including military discounts, those will have to be put into the online system again to apply.

The confusion caused the city to post a Facebook post answering some questions and addressing concerns. It's something the city has been handling with their small staff because residents are also having trouble getting through to Priority Waste customer service.

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"We just assumed that this transition would be smoother, that they would be able to, between the two companies, figure out the billing, that this wouldn't be passed on to the residents to prove that they paid or for the city to handle so many phone calls," Bains said. "It's just been frustrating."

Priority Waste says the best time to call is toward the end of the weekday to avoid long wait times. They say they had about 12,000 calls a day a few weeks ago. Now, the calls are down to 4,000 a day as more customers get acclimated.

They remind the community that they need up to 90 days to smooth out the kinks and have about a month left in that transition period.