City of San Jose Garbage & Recycling

Extremely poor customer service, and now that the city is paying them and not the people they don’t actually have to report or respond to the people at all. This is a perfect monopoly that our government put in place for us. They are very expensive and now that they don’t have to collect funds, deal with customer support or any of that, which saves them on the bottom line, they still have not decreased their rates.
It has taken me months and months to get a garbage can repaired and honestly, I think I have to just give up on it. Just like our government. Take the money but do not care.
Web site is beyond horrible. They do not return calls. Nothing. Oh, and their wonderful voicemail that says all voicemails will be returned within one day. Don’t bother. When they return it you cant get it and they never never call back.

How many times do pick-​ups need to be missed before someone in the city realizes something is wrong.

Why not just pick up everything on the curb? Just imagine how much cleaner San Jose would be if you just took everything. If it fits in the containers or in a plastic bag or is within your reach when you stop to make a collection, you should just take it.

This company demands all these certain requirements but when your garbage does not get picked up and you try to call, all they do is give you the run around. Wish there was someone else to go to but they have a monopoly on this business.

If they would routinely pick up the garbage on my entire street as they are paid to I’d be happy. Instead, my entire street often has its garbage forgotten about on pickup day. Calling them to report the issue is wasted time. Being on hold for 10+ minutes each time isn’t worth it just to hear them tell me they are «contacting dispatch» and «letting a supervisor know» since nothing changes. Missed pickups continue. Are the drivers playing hooky and driving the trucks to the beach instead? At my prior home with another garbage company I had zero missed pickups in 10 years.

This is for the online payment system. To echo another review, their system only supports internet explorer! This is San Jose, what a joke. Well, I got a delinquent garbage fee notice today, trying to check my payment history. Well looks like no browser is supported any more. Instead, it says: Peoplesoft Check appserverlogs …
So I picked up the phone and called them, after a 30 minute wait, was told that the online payment system is down until August! Previously, I set up a online regular payment, now their system crapped out. I got delinquent notice because of this. Garbage!

I want to weigh in on the online payment system. I was just told by a phone representative that the system only works with Internet Explorer. Are we really claiming to be the heart of the silicon valley? Who were the bone heads in charge of this? Good news though, the system is headed for the garbage. Definitely not recyclable

As promised, they replaced my garbage can, to the upgraded size, at the first available opportunity, right after my trash pickup, on my first following collection day. This was even sooner than they led me to believe.

What the hell… I just got a call from some collections person about service in 2006? So… I have no idea what this is about and questioned how I was able to start service at a new home in downtown San Jose (and the previous 3 places I’ve lived since 2006) without and problems if I had owed money. The person on the phone was quite rude and just kept talking over me so I hung up. I’m going to leave this corrupt country anyway and this is just one more reason. I’m so fed up with this sort of crap.

If I could I would give their service 0 stars! I dread garbage days because I always end up having to pick up trash that they «drop» in front of my house/​street, pick up my trash bin because they can never seem to put it back in place. I always find it blocking my drive way or even a house down… They had finally replaced my recycling bin after months because it was busted from them throwing it around like it’s a toy. I just don’t get it. I’ve called and complained but what do they do? Absolutely NOTHING.
These garbage men’s honestly just don’t give a crap. Another thing they are so damn expensive!

RIPOFF! ! !
Lets say you move out of your house. All utilities turned off, and it sits vacant. I called up to cancel garbage collection, as there is and will be no garbage (house to be sold). Nope. City passed an ordinance forcing you to maintain a service contract and you have to use the city’s designated trash service. So now I have a $ 500+ bill for services I never used. They refused to suspend or cancel service. They will not negotiate the bill. They are happy to send their attorneys after you though! This is enough for me to NEVER buy another home in San Jose. This is just wrong on so many levels.
From what I’ve read, it looks like this is the doing of city council. What is really needed is about 5000 people to go down there and speak their minds about this extortion practice. I actually just looked up extortion and coercion in the dictionary. Seems like an awfully good fit for whats occurring with San Jose and its trash collection service.
Of course any comments here are strictly the opinion of the author and in no way is to suggest anyone is actually doing anything ILLEGAL here.

San Jose’s Garbage and Recycling service has been miserable and expensive from the start, but miraculously, the same contractors are still doing well, while holding the privilege of providing their so-​called «service» on their own terms, regardless whether the people who pay them are satisfied (or adequately served) or not.
Now, they want San Jose residents to pay more fees for the next three years! Enough is enough. Please take a look at my blog, and if you agree with me, please send in your protest letters:

If you are a home owner in San Jose, dont just throw away that rate increase letter. They are going to raise rates AGAIN by 5%. They have done this for the last 5 years. Please write a protest to them.
You can email to them at
Here is what is in my letter feel free to copy paste but make it your own as I am sure you have your own gripes. By the way, you have to include your assessors parcel number. Home owners unite!
To whom it may concern;
I strongly protest this rate increase!
We have seen rates go up year after year while service is the worst I have ever seen in any place I have lived and I have lived all across the country.
My garbage containers are in horrible condition. They have holes in them and I have made repeated requests for new containers to no avail.
I feel like we are held hostage by the city of San Jose and if there is yet another price increase you can be sure I will cancel all your services save myself $ 120/​month That means you guys will be losing $ 1200/​year from me alone.
I will buy my own garbage can with a lid that actually seals and just make monthly trips to the dump. My gardener can haul away yard clippings. I will use the money I get from recycling bottles and cans to pay for the dump fee and plenty of services will pickup my cardboard for free. So, where is the value proposition for anything you guys do and now you want to charge us even more?! Sorry, but pickup of my garbage is not worth $ 60 a month much less 5% increase AGAIN!
Not only that but you have made property owners responsible for paying the garbage bills for rental properties so I got stuck with a $ 200 bill from a tenant during the changeover and when I called to find out when I got a huge bill, the person on the line told me «Oh well». Nice customer service.
I would appreciate your acknowledgement of this email.
Thank you!
Completely dissatisfied homeowner in San Jose,

On Oct 21, I called to have them pick up our larger garbage can and put our account back down to the smaller size (we’d temporarily upgraded to a bigger size). I was told they were going to pick up the larger can that week on pickup day. Fast forward to end of December and 6 calls later, they FINALLY picked up the bigger can. In the meantime, my account was getting charged the higher price range. Their reasoning? There was construction on the road. My road is 4 miles long, only sections of it were having construction — not where I live. I called and told them this every week and every time they assured me it would DEFINITELY get picked up this week. Finally, it was picked up the 2^nd to last week of December, but only after I called, again, and they had to send the supervisor to pick it up, because apparently their driver is incompetent. So, then our bill arrives 2 weeks later, and it’s still the upgraded price. I called again, and was told the supervisor and finance dept had to approve the lowered cost. 1 day later and a return phone call, I’ve been promised I will get a refund for the last 3 months with the larger can size. We’ll see if that actually happens.
The customer service reps were all very nice. All of them seemed to want to help, I’m just not sure what happened between their promises and the actual getting the request completed.
Too bad we’re stuck with only one garbage company in SJ and there’s no competition to make these guys to do a better job.

Update to this. Since having a «note» placed on my account to tell them to stop leaving my can tipped across the sidewalk (again…this requires a NOTE?) it has been left upstanding each week. However the first I got a huge note stuck to my can with an apparent violation on my part circle. I had been placing the cans too close to eachother. So the conclusion I can draw was that in previous weeks to punish me for my violations of space, they’d thrown the can. Nice.
So now, I take up both sides of my driveway so the trucks can have their appropriate space. This is San Jose, our homes are close together, people.

City of SJ contracts with Garden City Sanitation for garbage removal, so when you call the city’s garbage phone number, the calls are routed to Garden City.
My trash bin had a crack so I called to request a replacement last week. The lady who helped me needs to have better customer service. Our conversation went like this:
Lady: What’s wrong with your cart?
Me: There’s a large crack on it.
Lady: No, what is wrong with your cart?
Me: Uh… there’s a large crack on it.
Lady: I’m asking you what is wrong with your cart?
Me: Ummm… doesn’t a large crack on it answer your question? I’m not sure how you want me to answer. Do you want to know location? Then there’s a large crack on the side.
Lady: Ok.
Me (in my head): WTF?
She gave me instructions that the bin needed to be left out on garbage day. She then ask if I understood what do and I said «Yeah, leave it out on garbage day.»
I got a new bin, but man, someone needs to give this lady some customer service training.
The other gripe I have is their website for paying your bill online. It’s very quirky. Sometimes I can pay online and others times I can’t. Even though they say their website is compatible with all browsers, the only ones that seem to work is when I use Firefox or IE. (At home, I have a Mac and usually uses Chrome or Safari.) Also sometimes the links they have to view your estatement takes you directly to the city’s homepage.

Called, waited for 20mins. Was helped by a patient helpful lady.
Painful wait time. Government funding cuts I guess

Yet another enthusiastically low review of this laughable ‘service’. I used my online bank’s bill pay to pay GarbageSJ. This meant I had filled in all the fields (name, account #, fee, payee, etc. into the bank system. Things worked fine for a few years.
Then I started getting notices from GarbageSJ, that they hadn’t received my payment. I checked my bill pay schedule and it showed payments were regularly being sent and collected by GarbageSJ. So why are they sending me notices of non-​payment?
When I finally got someone on the phone from those **** people, they acknowledged having received my payments. Still the notices came. After a year of this mess, I escalated the situation. Finally, someone from GarbageSJ asked me what account # was the payment associated with and what was the account number on the bill.
Here’s the kicker. Somewhere along the way, GarbageSJ switched their account number format. They used to use 4 leading zeros. At some point they changed it to 4 trailing zeros.
Their claim — for the past year or so, I had been sending money to an account that no longer existed! They happily collected the money, but didn’t bother making a teeny effort to associate the core number and customer name and street address to a live account.
When I requested to get the funds back that they’d held in suspension (over $ 600), they basically said sorry. But they said they wouldn’t charge me late fees.
The unmitigated gall.
Somehow, I’m going to figure out how they’ll pay for that unjustified gall.
It’s a shame, regardless of the lack of quality in this so called service, we’re forced to pay or face the threat of liens and outrageous delinquency fees. I say they should have to prove they’ve performed at an acceptable level before being allowed such power.
OK. I’m done. I gotta go put the trash out!

I’m trying to sign up my new house for garbage service. I’m trying to give the City money willingly.
I’ve been on hold for an hour waiting to talk to someone to give them money.

SERIOUSLY!!!
I woke up again this morning and find my trash all over the front of my house. That’s four times already in the past three months!
I’m going to take a picture of today’s mess and post it again here on Unilocal.
Our trash guy is a serious A-​HOLE!!!
And we still pay the city for this f**ked up service.
BASTARDS!!!