citybin price increase - any alternatives?

BabySlam

Email from citybin today - charge going up by 4.50 per month. any viable alternatives?:)

camz09

Hi, where did you get this email and if possible can you post it here? Thank you. I'm currently having a major problem with this company suddenly charging me 40.93 euros, dating back from January relating to my brown compost bins which I am under the impression was free of charge (along with the green recycling bin). If I didn't check my bank statement they wouldn't have mentioned this. Nowhere on their website nor on my contract when I signed up ages ago were any charges attached to the brown compost bins. Now they're telling me it's 3.50 per lift (they charged me 3.70, eight times) and said the bins were not pulling through and only fixed this late April causing the big "dump" in fees. Why wasn't I told there was an aberration in their system?!? I find it very dubious. A shame since I thought they were better than the others then.

machiavellianme

Don't all the companies charge for brown bins?
At least I've never seen one do it for free.

BabySlam

Email dated 16/05/2015

"Some important pricing changes...

Since we started out, our policy has been to confront increases in costs by constantly re-examining our own cost base for savings. Unfortunately, from 1st June, we will need to adjust some of our price plans to deal with external increases (e.g. higher disposal rates, rising insurance, volatile recycling markets, etc.). This change will add €4.50 to your monthly service charge. We understand that price increases are unwelcome, but they ensure that we can continue to deliver first-class service to you while maintaining the best value we can."

monthly bill at the moment is 12.50

camz09

The citybin has a brown bin (organic compost), green (recyclables) which are to the best of my knowledge free. The grey-black bin(landfill) ones are not. I don't mind if the brown bin had a fee per lift, it's just that there was no announcement whatsoever of this change. You can look at their website. Now that I've confronted them about this 5 months worth of fees , which was a whopping surprise, suddenly it's an excuse of "whoops, sorry there was a problem recording your brown bin lifts for the past five months we did not inform you about.. give us your 40 euros!"

Islander13

As an aside. If citybin put up your price via email…

they don’t put up their prices for new customers, so simply email them and say you want to change package (they have a 14,17 and 24 eur option from memory). All much of a muchness as the lower ones have a per kg charge that evens out to roughly the same price

if I hadn’t done that a few times through the years. Up and down the packages, I’d say I’d be paying a fair bit per month more