Demand for rival bin firms after Greyhound criticism

PRIVATE WASTE firms say they have been inundated with requests from former Dublin City Council customers to provide an alternative bin collection service to Greyhound.

Greyhound took over many collections from the council on January 16th. Residents continued to report yesterday that their bins had not been collected since the changeover.

Greyhound said no collections have been missed but said some customers were having difficulty adjusting to a new collection day. “Any incidents of bins or bags not collected are very isolated, if they are happening at all,” a spokesman said.

But rival firms say they have received thousands of calls from customers who are unhappy with Greyhound’s service.

Oxigen, which began offering a service to former council customers in recent days, said it had taken on two more staff to deal with the volume of inquiries. “We had been planning to roll out the service in the city council area on a systematic basis, but we are offering the service now because of the huge demand,” a spokeswoman said.

City Bin, which has close to 10,000 customers in south Dublin and Fingal, said it has received more than 1,000 requests from former city council customers since Greyhound took over and would soon be offering a service to new customers in some city areas.

“We will be looking carefully at where we will serve. We will only provide bin collections to areas we believe are underserviced,” managing director Niall Killilea said.

Brian McCabe of Panda said they had received “a couple of thousand calls” from people seeking an alternative to Greyhound. Panda recently took on the Fingal County Council bin collections and intends to make sure its operation is bedded down before moving into the city, he said.

Greyhound said more than half of the 140,000 former council customers had already signed up for its service which “hugely exceeded our expectations”.