Bin charges - Never asked to pay but now service is revoked. Advice please.

milltown

I have lived in my house in Lucan for a little over two years now and in that time I've had two items of communication from the council regarding bins and their collection. When my wheelie bin was delivered a flyer was put in the letterbox advising collection days and that an invoice would be issued in the future for the cost of the bin. Then a flyer advising us of a change to bank holiday weekend collections (Monday is bin day).

Nothing since then. A friend who also lives in Lucan mentioned a while back that he got a bill from the council. Their are still houses to be built in my estate and it hasn't been taken in charge by the council yet so I guessed this was why we hadn't been billed yet.

Last week the bins were not collected. I figured the truck couldn't get by a parked car or skip, as has happened before. This week some of the bins were collected but not mine or my next door neighbour's. I met the neighbour in the garden and she told me thay aren't collecting bins without the tags on them. News to me, I was never asked to buy a tag. She said they have been getting bills and court threats from the council for over a year but have been ignoring them, like the protest posters advise. They went over to the council in Tallaght today and were told they owe €380 for the past two years. They made a deal to pay something like €60 per month for the next 6 months to get them up to date.

I have never got a bill or been threatened with court. Can the council now tell me that I have to pay for the past two years in, pretty much, one lump just because they neglected to bill me or inform me?

Tried ringing them today but line was engaged all day. Interested to hear people's opinions before I get to talk to them.

bonkey

Originally posted by milltown
I have never got a bill or been threatened with court. Can the council now tell me that I have to pay for the past two years in, pretty much, one lump just because they neglected to bill me or inform me?

As far as I know, you cannot be billed retroactively....but you'd have to be able to prove that you never were invoiced...and that could be tough.

jc

spudulike

I'm also a Lucan resident for almost a year now, though originally from outside Dublin. Since January the council has adopted a tag system in place of the flat fee system. This means you only pay when your bin is collected. In my case i will only fill my bin once every 2 weeks so this new system will actually work out cheaper over the duration of the year. I think it's a good system that encourages more recycling...

Now back to your situation. One question - did you not think it curious that you were given a service free of charge???? If you were aware of the campaign then you were aware that a charge was due for refuse collection - correct? Were you not expecting a day like this to come??? However i would say if you haven't received a bill in the past then you might be lucky - i would go down to Tallagh like your neighbour and pleade ignorance - you might get away without having to pay the arrears. Alternatively you could 'give to cesear what is cesears' and pay for the service you've been receiving....

Morpheus

Problem here is that,

A. You admit you recieved a flyer about the future charging of bns via invoicing,

and

B. you were aware that your neighbour was going to the council about lack of charge payments.

My advice is that you get on to the council and demand to know why they have failed to invoice you and that you want to speak to someone at the top, that you will not be paying for invoices that you never recieved because other than the warning, they failed to advise you further, however being a concerned citizen, you request in future that the council invoice you properly, but stress that you will not be paying for unrecieved invoices, maybe seeking the advice of a solicitor will be a benefit (if it will save on the 2 years charges you may be slapped with) before approaching them, or indeed speeking to a local council committee member or a TD.

However if you dont adopt this approach and hope you will dissappear into the background, believe me, they will eventually find out and will come down hard on you. If you DO contact them, they may agree to just charge you from now on, but i wouldnt wait around, they could take you to court and if you simply plea that you knew nothing about it, yet you knew about the flyer and the neighbour, you COULD be up sh*t creek without a canoe! :dunno:

SheroN

play dumb and say you got nothing. Make out like you don't know what's going on.

Samson

If SDCC has adopted a tag system, surely all you need to do is buy a tag and place it on your bin whenever you want it collected?
Can tags be bought in shops in the SDCC area?

A colleague of mine, who lives in Clonsilla, which is in Fingal, just buys a tag (in a local shop AFAIK) whenever he needs one.

seamus

There was a general letter sent around about the tags, sent to "The occupier" about 3 weeks ago. Maybe you never received it, because as you say, the houses haven't been taken under council control yet.

You probably will have to pay the money, and it may be in your better interests. As others say, if it goes to court, it's up to you to prove that you never received an invoice, and the question might be put to you as to why you didn't think it was strange that your neighbours were getting these letters, and hundreds of people on TV were protesting about it, yet you hadn't been asked to pay anything.

Morpheus has it spot on there.

seamus

Originally posted by Samson
If SDCC has adopted a tag system, surely all you need to do is buy a tag and place it on your bin whenever you want it collected?
Can tags be bought in shops in the SDCC area?

Yep. A list of places was sent around with the letter.

http://www.sdcc.ie/index.aspx?pageid=57&deptid=5&pageno=39

spudulike

If SDCC has adopted a tag system, surely all you need to do is buy a tag and place it on your bin whenever you want it collected?

Combined with the tag which you buy each week for your bin there is a sticker that has been sent out to all houses who do NOT owe any arrears - the bin collectors have been instructed to only collect from bins which contain the stickers indicating no arrears and also a tag for that week.

milltown

Could be good news!
Just off the phone with them and it seems for whatever reason my house was never put on the system. Assuming the mistake is at their end they will just send out the sticker and waive the arrears.

In case anybody got the wrong idea, I am not protesting against the bin charges. I fully agree that in order for the service to be sustained and improved it must have money invested in it.

What I would protest is getting a bill in year three demanding that two years arrears be paid before a bin is collected from my house again.
But thankfully it looks like that is not the case.

TomF

In suburban Cork City, the bin charge went from an equivalent of €190 in 2002 in one swell foop to €390 for 2003. My wife and I decided we aren't too proud to haul our own refuse to the landfill, so roughly every 3 weeks, we load up our car and drive to the Kinsale Road landfill and pay €10 to toss the bags into the containers. Last week while I was loading the car, one of the neighbour ladies (from South Africa) walked by and commented "A little ridiculous, isn't it?". I told her the savings were covering the ridicule completely. It feels good to be saving a little bit, but I'm sure if the landfill closes and moves up north to Bottlehill that we may have to modify our approach.

I dug out our receipts and this is what they say about refuse charges:
1999 110 punt €139.67
2000 120 punt €152.37
2001 130 punt €165.07
2002 €190.00
2003 €390.00
2004 Don't know, but I'll hazard a S.W.A.G. that it will be more than €390.

gurramok

Tripled in 4 years ?
At what level can it stop rising ?
Surely it cant be that bad in Cork

TomF

In 1999 the GPs here were charging 20 punt (€25.39) for an office visit and as of last week the same GPs are charging €45.

In January 2003 I had to have some mortgage papers witnessed and the lawyer charged €30 for signing his name and stamping the papers with his rubber stamp. This week I had to have one mortgage paper witnessed and the same lawyer charged €50 for the service.

What did the broadsheet newspapers cost in 1999? The Irish Times is now €1.50 and it seems to me it was 95 pence (€1.21) in 1999.

seamus

I'm convinced that prices rose a hell of a lot more after the boom, and took a sudden jump when the world's economy generally returned to normality (I say normality because what it was before was just a big cash bonanza, the market hasn't gone into recession, it's returned to normality IMO). That's OT anyway.

TomF

I rang Cork County Council and was told the 2004 Refuse Charges will be €400, a trifling €10 increase over 2003. The rate of increase from 1999 to 2002 varied from 8.3% to 15.1% each year, followed by the 105.3% shocker from 2002 to 2003, and so the 2.6% from 2003 to 2004 must have been chosen to soothe the rabble.

Victor

Originally posted by TomF
In suburban Cork City, the bin charge went from an equivalent of €190 in 2002 in one swell foop to €390 for 2003. My wife and I decided we aren't too proud to haul our own refuse to the landfill, so roughly every 3 weeks, we load up our car and drive to the Kinsale Road landfill and pay €10 to toss the bags into the containers. Last week while I was loading the car, one of the neighbour ladies (from South Africa) walked by and commented "A little ridiculous, isn't it?". I told her the savings were covering the ridicule completely.

And the time, effort and use of car costs how much?

Matt Simis

Originally posted by Victor
And the time, effort and use of car costs how much?

My thoughts too.

€390 a year = €32 a month
To compare like with like, every 3 weeks that costs you €24.37 to simply bring your rubbish to the edge of the street. You are saving yes, but most people would accept the value of labour, petrol and time is worth more than €14.37 every three weeks.



Matt

TomF

Well, we drive to Cork city centre several times a week anyway. If I put the bin out for the County Council truck, that is the same effort as rolling it out to my own car. Putting the bags into the car is 2 minutes of effort. The glee produced in me by not paying the huge annual fee probably extends my life-span by a year every time I think of it, not to mention the feeling of "being in control" that we get by doing it ourselves. As an example from another aspect of the daily hum-drum, I'm afraid people defeat themselves by not being willing to go to the petrol station that is selling cheaper just because it is a little extra effort, or to go to a different pub when your favourite is charging an arm and a leg for a pint. This reluctance to not take it any more fuels the cartel-mentality that is dominant in this country. Get off your knees Ireland!