Ridwell

While I strongly support Ridwell’s mission and local environmental efforts to help reduce waste, I’ve had a very difficult experience with Ridwell due to their poor efforts to enter my building to pick up my bin. I live in an apartment building where anyone attempting to get in needs to use the callbox for the front door to open. It’s also not safe to leave anything outside the building. If I’ve missed the call (they usually only attempt once) my bin doesn’t get picked up. I tried asking the organization for a heads up on the day of pick up for a more targeted eta on their pre planned route, I was denied. The last straw has been today, I was prepared by having my phone on ringer within my sight all day and at 4pm I receive a text stating “we attempted to pick up today but unable to gain access to your building”. There was NO phone call. No attempt made. I have weeks of build up waste I’d love for them to pick up and waiting patiently for the next pick up only to be denied with no attempt on their end to get into my building. Still waiting to hear back as to their justification for their failure.

Ridwell has come up with a model for reducing, reusing, recycling that is genius and I only wish I had started up with them a long time ago. Our household tries in many ways to reduce, reuse, and find options for recycling items that inevitably make it into our lives. I have spent many hours trying to find ways to recycle the items that don’t go into a curbside bin only to hit dead ends on some things and the other things that I found could be recycled I have spent a lot of time and fuel on the road to get them to a place that will and can take them. Ridwell has a network of many different companies and groups that DO accept hard to recycle things like plastic caps and bread tabs, alkaline batteries and styrofoam! And so much more. Ridwell has a really great, user friendly, app that explains where each type of item ends up going. It also explains when my pick ups are and any pertinent information for “featured items “ (another thing I love). Ridwell has attention to detail. Their small brochure tells me it is printed with vegetable ink 100% post consumer paper, letting me know I can safely compost it. Ridwell, THANK YOU for your excellent customer service and for your thoughtful business model.

I have only used Ridwell about 3 months and so far they have not picked up as scheduled 2 times. So here I sit with all this stuff and the reply is “so sorry, unhappily no one can pick up Until Your next scheduled day”, which is 2 weeks away. I was offered a $4 credit as I will have “excess” in my next pick up. I asked for a credit equal to 1/2 my monthly fee as they did not pick up 1/2 of my stuff. So what is the problem? I have no answers but am quite unhappy with the service. UPDATE: I canceled my account with Ridwell, but did receive a message that a supervisor had been notified of my complaint. I wrote back that I would reinstate my account if someone came to pick up my stuff. That supervisor personally came to my home and retrieved the items that were missed earlier that day. I was told the driver was elderly and sometimes got confused with addresses. I did reactivate my account, I have empathy for the driver, however the issue has to be fixed going forward as this is a paid for service and I expect service to be performed. I also noted that one more miss will result in permanent cancelation if my account. But the supervisor took control and performed above expectation.