Fuel Oil and Garbage companies (new home, neighborhood, live)

[twinswinmh]

We just purchased a house and still need to set up garbage and fuel oil services. Any ideas on what you folks use and the prices that go with it, and good or bad experiences?

It is cheaper to pay for a fill than have the monthly or regular fillups, right...? Which would be why the Curtis Oil company "strongly suggests" that we go the route of Autofill?

Superior Oil seems like a good route...simple and honest about fees?

Garbage we have no idea, but it likely doesn't matter because I'm assuming most will be similar in price, but info would be lovely.

[brandy77]

I think there are at least 4 or 5 garbage companies. I've had Hartels for 5 years and have no complaints. They don't create a mess (unlike some companies) and they don't complain about extra junk.

[Beenaroundabit]

We have North Shore Sanitary. Like you, we didn't know who to go with when we moved here, so we picked a "local" company recommended by our next-door neighbor. Trying to keep dollars in the community, support local business, etc.

If I had it to do again, I'd go with Waste Management.

We've lived in multiple states (and in different locations within those states), so we've had many different trash collection companies. We're used to making sure we adhere to whatever rules are implemented: only certain containers, only X number of bags, bags and containers secured, etc. What I mean is...we're not the kind of people whose trash cans are overflowing, stuff unbagged, piles of junk, 3 extra bags next to the container every week, etc. In fact, our trash can is tiny and almost never full because we recycle so much.

That said, on the ONE occasion where we had some extra trash which was placed neatly next to the container, North Shore Sanitary left it there with an attached nasty-gram about how if we wanted to leave extra stuff, we should have rented a bigger trash can. That was for a single bag of trash in addition to the container....ONE TIME about 8 months after we had moved in.

I'd also like to see more frequent recycling pickups than just twice a month. Might even encourage people to recycle more (many of my neighbors don't seem to recycle anything at all).

[jasper1372]

For garbage service, I'd tell you to go with Waste Management. We've been with them for probably 15 years now with nary a compliant. As the previous poster said, they will occasionally pick up extra bags/boxes etc... and have NEVER charged extra for that, most likely as long as you don't do it to often.

Years ago (more than 15 years ago) we too had gone with a smaller locally owned company since we were new to the area and didn't really know who to go with. They charged us extra every time we so much as had an small extra grocery bag next to the can. Even if the extra was on top of the garbage in the can and the lid was half open due to the extra bag.....yup. an extra couple bucks charged on our bill for that week. I guess we didn't object at the time since we knew we had put an extra bag out.

This same "locally owned" company routinely left some of our paper garbage littered along the rural road where we lived.....we were horrified more than once when we found some stuff while walking along the road that we knew belonged to us. We called them a few times and always got the "you can't prove that we did that".....no I can't. But the odds are pretty good that it was since it was always along the road in the direction the garbage truck went when it left out house. Finally I just stopped calling when it happened.


However when we built a new home and moved....we decided to go with Waste Management (it was actually Zenith Waste back then) and you know how when you move for a few weeks you have tons of extra garbage for a while.....we NEVER got an extra bill for what amounted to a lot of extra garbage for a few weeks. We were very impressed and have never regretted our decision.

Just to show you how good treatment can pay dividends. Over the years whenever anyone new moved into our neighborhood we'd reccomend Waste Management to them and most of them took our advice and it actually made me feel good to pay them back for our good treatment over the years.

One kind of funny story (gross to in a way), last summer we went out to retreive our emptied garbage can on garbage day.....and right there on the side of the street were 4 or 5 disposable diapers along with some vegetable scraps.....it only took me a minute to figure that one out. Our neighbors who use a different garbage service then us (not Waste Management) recently had a baby.....so figure it out :-) So, I guess some companies still haven't figured out how to keep the garbage in the truck....lol

I'm sure there are multiple companies that offer good service...all I can tell you is what I personally have experienced.