I have been recycling (glass, plastic, cardboard) since the late ’90s, when I interviewed* an MTSU professor about it. Back then I kept a small bin on my back deck and about once a month I’d drive it over to the Kroger on the corner of Broad and Northfield. Jesse loved throwing the glass into the large metal bins.
Not long after Gerry and I bought the house on the other side of town, I investigated a recycling pickup service. There was one: All-In-One Recycling. Locally owned, very responsive. Young folks. I talked about them a lot on Facebook, recommending them, and I believe I was, in fact, responsible for gaining some customers for them. Sometimes after 2017, they sold their company to another local recycling company, so we became customers of the larger, county-wide Stones River Recycling.
But the pandemic came and brought hard times for the new owners.
Then these idiots (pardon my truthful language) from Utah—Recyclops—came in and “bought the company” in early 2022. If you look really hard on Recyclops’ current website—the old one was pretty upfront about everything—you’ll learn their corporate location is in Salt Lake City (elsewhere I’ve seen Oren). But they’ve expanded a lot since it was founded in 2013, and nowadays they’re quite cagey about how to contact them.
I can’t recall when I was approached to become a new/continuing customer (by email, with a link to their company website) but when I first began to pay attention, the recycling customers in our subdivision—which now had about two dozen Stones River clients, if not more—were losing their minds in posts in our Facebook group. The Recyclops prices were significantly higher; ultimately our subdivision was offered a slightly reduced rate to get us all on board. Gerry and I pay annually, since it’s cheapest.
Almost immediately, I noticed stupidity in Recyclops’ communication. Oh, they sent us emails, for sure. Read our blog! for example. But as I said on Facebook in June 2022:
Our recycling company is terrible about communicating clearly. Yesterday they sent a link to a blog they called “Common items that can’t be recycled.” The list includes pizza boxes, styrofoam, wire hangers, ceramics and pottery … and then there’s this:
“Some plastic bags and plastic wrap: We all use plastic bags when we go to the grocery store or out shopping right? Sadly, I know this one hurts because we were taught as kids we could recycle them, but the truth is plastic wrap CANNOT be accepted because the lightweight material clogs, tangles and can destroy machinery in our recycling centers. In this case I would recommend bringing your own recyclable or reusable bags for grocery shopping and when you’re out at a department store or mall.”
I read this and thought So …? Which plastic bags specifically?
The paragraph begins, “We all use plastic bags when we go to the grocery store or out shopping right?” But plastic bags dispensed by the grocery store are utterly different from plastic bags dispensed by a department store (which are thicker, stiffer, nothing at all like a grocery bag). Are they referring to both? Then they go on “the truth is, plastic wrap CANNOT be accepted because the lightweight material clogs, tangles and …” which mentions plastic WRAP.
I think Saran Wrap when you say wrap. But maybe they mean cellophane wrap (which isn’t actually plastic)? They say nothing at all about a plastic bag like a Ziploc bag, or a similar-weight bag new clothing is often shipped in. Are those recyclable? The point here is THIS BLOG DOESN’T HELP their customers. It doesn’t communicate their meaning clearly.
Yes, I am an editor, for sure. And the person writing that blog desperately needed an editor for a blog the company was disseminating by email to all of their clients nationwide. Even just the lack of a comma before the “right?” bugged me. Sloppy.
And then, in March 2023, they got under my skin again, not with a blog but with corporate emails:
The company—based in Utah—that is our recycling provider apparently doesn’t have anyone with word skills composing their corporate communications. For the year since they took over, the company’s emails are often confusing, sometimes don’t say enough, and on and on. It’s ridiculous, really, how poorly this company represents itself “on paper.”
In the last couple months, they’ve taking to sending a “tracking email” letting me know the collection truck is on the way. It also contains an option for me to leave a tip. But really? This is a service we pay for. Nonetheless, I’ve been ignoring that.
Today, I decided to unsubscribe—which I thought would be from the tracking emails. (I need to know if there is a delay or cancellation, not that they are on the way. That’s their service for which we pay; I assume they are doing it.) But the response was “unsubscribed from email from Recyclops.” Obviously** there is some email from Recyclops that I will need to receive. But there is no mention of that, nor no option to resubscribe until I can communicate with a human, though I must say that everyone associated with this company is a woefully inept communicator. [By this point I’d had two or three phone calls under my belt, all unsatisfying, with people who sounded like teenagers.]
Is it that I am a professional communicator and know better? Is it just that I’m old and used to a higher standard? Don’t large companies generally have at least one person on staff who is meant to compose public statements/emails/press releases, and so on? Or have standards for things like this changed? #lifeinthe21stcentury
The next month, on April 8, 2023, we were charged $264 for the coming year of weekly pickups. (We only put it out every other week; we don’t have that much to recycle.) I’m working on my taxes right now, so I have my receipt from that year: we were billed and I paid online on April 8.
Recyclops sends me three emails every Thursday: the first is titled “Track your order from Recyclops”; the second is “We’re on our way!”; and the third is “Review your service.” This is where they want me to leave them a tip, even on the days we put nothing out.
Now fast forward to 2024—specifically to Thursday, April 4th. Gerry checks the credit card statement online every morning over tea/coffee, and he says: “We’ve been charged $408 by Recyclops. Did you get a bill in email?”
That’s a helluva a price jump to get no warning for, yeah? We’re a bit breathless.
“No,” I tell him later, “I got nothing.” I checked again just to be sure. I get plenty of email from this crowd, but no warning of a pending bill. For example, I subscribe online to The Atlantic, and they send me an email two weeks out: you will be charged on X date. I subscribe to a deluxe, online version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary; they give me a full month’s warning. I could go on and on with automatic payments and subscriptions. But from Recyclops, nothing.
At this point, I already don’t like these Recyclops people. I have no respect for this company. So we talk it over and decide we’ll cancel the service. I go to the Recyclops website, which tells me if I have questions, problems, or whatever, I should call my local franchise, not the main office; the website offers me the list, and I call the number for Rutherford County.
I get voicemail. So, speaking slowly, I tell them my name, address, and phone number, and tell them the charge came as a surprise and we’ve decided to cancel our service, but please call me back. Meanwhile, Gerry goes to our credit card account online but can do nothing because the charge is listed as “pending.”
Again, this was a Thursday. I get no call back, no emails. The charge is still pending, according to BofA. So on Monday the 8th I call the local number again, and again it goes straight to voicemail. So Gerry calls the bank, files a complaint, and the $408 charge has a hold placed on it; the helpful person at the credit card bank tells us it may take ten days to get it all sorted out. And that got Recyclops’ attention. All of a sudden on Tuesday the 9th I have three new emails from Recyclops, one dated the 4th informing us we’re being charged (did they just not press SEND?) and the others informing us of the refund of $400. See, they had to charge us $8 for a week when we had nothing out for them to pick up.
I’ll take it.
I have better uses for the time I’ve spent writing this up, but Recyclops is crap, and I want to warn you off.
*One of my “spare” jobs was writing assignments for the MTSU alumni magazine. I believe the interviewee was Dr. Pat Doyle, a retired biology professor, who started MTSU’s recycling program back in 1972! Ahead of his time!
**Of course, they didn’t send the most important.
Seriously.
Wanderlustful 