I’m fuming and need advice.
Our bins were (finally) collected this week, we missed 2 collections because of the holidays and despite calling up twice during the holiday period, nobody could tell us when our next collection would be, in order to compensate for the two missed collections (but that is another story).
Collection day finally rolled round again and they came. I was in the living room at the time and heard a loud noise outside, looked out of the window and was pleased to see that it was them. They have our gate access code so they let themselves in.
After a couple of minutes I looked out again and the guy was clearly having difficulty shutting the gate (my 3 year old could do it, you pull the leaver up, hold it up whilst pushing the gate back and pop the leaver back down into the hole).
Just as I was about to open the window and shout down, he was quickly walked off. So I had to then go downstairs (we live in a flat) with 2 children (holding one of them) in the rain and close it. I couldn’t leave it open because the wind could easily blow it back too far and into pedestrians (we live on a busy main road). Essentially the leaver on the gate ALWAYS has to be in one of the holes in the ground, otherwise it could be very dangerous.
Any way, I went down (which was already a but of an inconvenience in the rain with two kids) but could not move the gate. The loud noise I had heard when he arrived was presumably him scraping the metal leaver along the ground whilst pulling the gate back - you are meant to hold it up, which is quite obvious as it must have taken his full force to scrape that leaver back over uneven bricks.
Any way, turned out he scraped it along the ground so hard that the leaver had bent and I could no longer lift it up to move the gate.
Even though it was technically stuck, I was still very worried a strong force of wind could blow it forward into a pedestrian so blocked it with the bin and a sandbag.
I couldn’t get my car in or out because the gate was half open and stuck. It was a bit of a bloody disaster.
Called up the company, they told me to report it to their insurance company, which I did right away.
They got back to me this morning by email saying that they have spoken to the driver and the depot and have denied any damage or wrongdoing. They have lied further by saying that the rubbish truck has cctv and that they have watched it back to find no evidence. I saw the truck and it was positioned past the gate and could not have picked up ANY footage of the gate incident. So that was a complete lie.
Sadly, I do not have cctv, nor do my neighbours opposite. So it is my word against theirs.
Is there anything else I can do? I would just leave it (we have since temporarily repaired the gate although we do need a new leaver) but it’s the lies that are getting to me, particularly about their so called ‘cctv’.
They are a big, well know company and I would have liked to have thought that they would have done the right thing and apologised and offered to compensate. A customer service rep today also (slipped up, probably) and told me that the collection details have since been deleted on their system, as though they never collected the bin on that day! They are doing their best to cover it all up.
Can I leave a poor review? Bit worried about getting done for defamation or what not, but equally I am not prepared to move on from it without kicking up a fuss.
Well done if you made it to the end!