By Andrew Edwards
Elmore/Autauga News
Waste Management officials met with the Autauga County Commission on Tuesday afternoon to address consumer complaints about the industry’s lack of service.
John Paul O’ Driscoll, Solid Waste Officer for Autauga County, summarized several of the issues that the county has dealt with since Waste Management bought out Advanced Disposal in November 2020.
“Currently, we do not have good service in this county. We don’t have easy pick-up for customers, there are routes that are not being completed, and the contents inside the vehicles are not being enclosed,” O’Driscoll said. “Their call center does not serve customers in the county, as we’ve had numerous reports of people waiting 45 plus minutes to get into contact with a representative. They’ve also failed to credit customers from November through February, which violates the sovereign disposal act.”
O’Driscoll went on to explain that Waste Management did not either run or complete 13 routes in just the month of April alone. That led to 3,300 missed pickups.
“I got the excuse from them that the drivers ran out of hours, which is simply not valid. I would ask that the commission tells Waste Management to comply with their contract instead of what they’ve been doing, which is littering on every road that they’ve operated on since December,” O’Driscoll said.
John Thrailkill, Autauga County District 2 Commissioner, spoke on some of the key issues that he believes Waste Management needs to improve.
“There’s a lot of citizens that have not gotten the service that they have paid for, and I want to see people reimbursed who need to be reimbursed,” Thrailkill said. “Customer service has to be improved, too. Everybody who has spoken to us about it has had incredibly long wait times on the phone, and there needs to be someone there to readily talk to on the line when there is a problem.”
Two Waste Management Representatives, Van Forrester and Rick Prather, spoke before the commission acknowledging the mistakes that their company has made.
“We didn’t really have the foresight to understand the impact of what the routes were in the Advanced Disposal System, and how it was going to come over into our system. The migration happened successfully, but we had people using a turn-by-turn system instead of an actual route sheet. So, when it came over to our system, it was, to say the least, a big mess,” Forrester said.
Both officials laid out Waste Management’s plan to fix the issues that have plagued Autauga County. It starts with communication.
“We have two routing analysts in our Montgomery office, and their focus starting last week was Autauga County. They’ll make sure the routes are done on the right days. In recent years customers would just call up here and tell us the days that their trash was supposed to be picked up, so this will improve accountability all around,” Forrester said.
In order to fix call times, Waste Management has moved their call center from Moody, Alabama to Franklin, Tennessee.
“We’ve heard stories of people waiting over an hour on the phones, but as of yesterday we’ve been answering calls in just a little over a minute,” Forrester said.
Waste Management is also working on implementing daily service reports, and hiring route auditors to help give them a clearer picture about what each and every route should look like.
“We’re moving everything inside the trucks to digital only. It will sequence up the routes, and drivers will be able to just touch a screen and it will take them to their next stop. No uncertainty about where they need to go next,” Forrester said.
Waste Management will also be adding a fourth route to Autauga County, and will be creating a “WM” App where individuals will receive a notification once their trash has been taken.
Forrester also vehemently stated that the Waste Management will do a better job of keeping in contact with O’Driscoll and the rest of the Autauga County Commission.
Prather noted that Waste Management has not lived up to the expectations that they set for themselves, but that they will be resolving the issues soon.
“The technology that Waste Management has is unmatched compared to any other waste hauler in the county. We have fallen short of our expectations, and we are committed to making this right, quickly, for you. We believe we have the tools to do that,” Prather said.
Waste Management representatives stated that they hope to implement several of their new strategies starting on May 10th.
