I think we can all forgive Jed Hinkley for being a little irritated with FCC Environmental.

“I think ultimately I ended up being without trash cans for about three and a half months-ish,” Hinkley said. “Luckily, Paul (a neighbor) was nice enough to let me put my stuff in his, and then he was taking some of our recycling, or I just put it next to his. And then my back porch was just full of recycling because I didn’t want to throw it away.”

Like most Buncombe County residents, Hinkley, who lives in the Weaverville area, was supposed to get the new FCC trash cans in December, after the former contractor, WastePro, picked up its cans. The message he heard was what everyone else heard: If you’re an existing customer, your service will roll over to the new provider. So just leave your old bins out there for WastePro to pick up, and FCC will bring new ones by and start picking up your trash in January.

Buncombe chose FCC in part because the company’s rates were slightly lower than Waste Pro’s proposal, which the county felt exceeded inflation. WastePro had held the contract for 10 years, and while service was solid over the last few years, the company struggled at times with customer service, too.

When all of his neighbors got rolling bins and he didn’t, Hinkley started calling FCC. He estimates he called them six to eight times, typically getting a customer service center in Colorado. 

“Each time you would talk to someone, and they’d say, ‘Well, okay, give me your address and your name, and we’ll submit a ticket for you,’” Hinkley said. “And so I think by the fourth or fifth time, I was like, ‘Clearly, there’s no communication happening here.’ And there was never any follow up.”

The customer service folks were always nice, he said, and he didn’t blame them for the screw-up. By early February, Hinkley said he just asked them if he could pick up a bin himself, but he was told FCC hadn’t set up its Buncombe County facility yet.

He also filled out an online form, and he reached out to Buncombe County Board of Commissioners Chair Amanda Edwards. Still, no bins.

By late March/early April, Hinkley had thrown in the towel. Then a stroke of luck struck.

“Actually, my girlfriend had seen a can blown over into a river — a recycling bin,” Hinkley said. “So there was a recycling bin just sitting in a river, and I said, ‘Oh yeah, next time you’re on your way home, can you grab that for me?’”

Score! The man finally had a bin!

Then another lightning bolt of good luck struck.

“And so then after that, I think in early April, I went down to their center off Sweeten Creek, and I just showed up and said, ‘Hey, here’s the scenario: Can I pick up a bin?’” Hinkley said. “And they said, ‘Sure, but we only have the small ones.’ Which, honestly, I really only need a small one, but they were out of all sizes but the small ones.’”

Fortunately, his household doesn’t make a lot of trash. 

Here’s a nice touch: the FCC worker looked Hinkley up in their system and noted that he was “a former customer.” He was told he’d get a can, and they’d set him up with service.

“I have a can, I’m getting service, but nobody’s billed me or sent me an email, or I haven’t gotten an email,” Hinkley said. “So I don’t know what the status of my actual billing account is. But they saw me in the system, and they registered that I picked up a can, and I haven’t heard from them since. That was probably the first or second week in April.”

And now FCC is picking up his trash and recycling on the regular.

Now, after that amount of frustration, I think I’d just take some free pickups for, oh, I don’t know, life. But Hinkley is an honest guy.

“I’m a believer that they’re providing me service, and I should be paying for it,” he told me.

I salute this man. We both marveled at how in the modern computer age a company’s computer system and intertwined customer service can be so bad. We talked about how when you order something online you immediately get a confirmation receipt and then tracking emails and texts if you request them, until it’s on your doorstep.

It’s almost stalker-ish. They’re in contact so much it’s like an ex-girlfriend that won’t leave you alone after the breakup.

Is FCC meeting Buncombe County’s set goals?

As I’d also heard from several other people in recent weeks about poor FCC customer service and Hinkley mentioned seeing other complaints on social media, I decided to reach out to Buncombe County to see if the company is meeting its goals. Back in January when I wrote about their rocky rollout, I noted that in a county briefing, Buncombe County Manager Avril Pinder had addressed the issue, noting that “delays and missed pickups have been incredibly frustrating.”

Pinder said then that the county had set “an action plan” for FCC, with the expectation that the company would maintain a 98 percent collection rate starting Feb. 1. So I went back to the county last week for an update.

“FCC has been at 100 percent completion of trash and recycling routes since mid-March,” county spokesperson Johanna Cano told me via email. “This means that all assigned routes were run for that date of collection, but it does not mean that every single customer had their waste picked up. Misses can still occur even if 100% of the routes are completed.”

This can happen because of bins being placed incorrectly, access to bins being blocked, service issues at specific addresses, or driver error, Cano explained.

“While the overall route is completed, these isolated misses don’t prevent the route itself from being marked as complete,” Cano said.

The number of complaints about FCC has also dropped considerably. Cano provided this list:

Complaints Received:

January: 436

February: 231

March: 90

April: 99

May: 31 (as of May 12).

“Through our issue tracker, which was established to help triage FCC concerns and questions, we have received 1,782 submissions from Jan. 1 to May 7,” Cano said. “Topics include no new FCC bins delivered, questions on how to pay their bills, missed pickups, and more.”

Cano added that FCC maintained a 98 percent completion rate for the majority of February, “with the exception of four days in February due to staff having the flu. The lowest rate during this time was 92 percent for recycling.”

I also asked if FCC had been fined or otherwise punished by the county for poor service.

“Liquidated damages will be assessed to FCC per contract for valid missed service that was not recovered within the contract-specified timeline,” Cano said. “We are currently in discussion with FCC on the amount of penalties that will be assessed.”

Buncombe County Board of Commissioners Chair Amanda Edwards, who was inundated with calls and emails from residents back in January when FCC took over, said the situation has improved.

“What I can tell you is the emails coming to the commissioners come in waves,” Edwards said.

Some days FCC might miss a pickup in one area, or they have trouble with what’s sometimes called “back door service” — special pickups for folks with mobility issues or who can’t roll a bin to the street.

“So I do think, anecdotally, on some of that special service, they are still working through that pickup,” Edwards said. “That seems to be the biggest amount of complaints that I have received from individuals.”

Overall, Edwards views the FCC situation as “improving, with some bumps in the road as we go.”

“And I think a lot of that is as they’re learning the routes, and our rural country roads that can be tucked in between mailboxes and hard to find,” Edwards said.

FCC responds: ‘This is something we take seriously’

I also reached out to Charles Merkley, vice president of business development with FCC, to ask about their recent performance and improvements they’ve made. He said the company has “taken several key steps to improve our service in Buncombe County.”

“We’ve re-optimized our service routes to ensure the right trucks are assigned to the appropriate areas, increasing efficiency and reliability,” Merkley said. “To better accommodate the growing number of customers, we’ve also added an additional route and continue to adjust our service model to meet local demand.”

Merkley said FCC has also “enhanced” its small “pup truck” operations “by reducing the number of homes on each route and adding more routes on certain days.”

“We’ve added a new operations manager, two route supervisors, and an additional dispatcher who helps monitor routes in real time and manage customer inquiries,” Merkley said. “We also now have a local billing agent onsite to assist customers directly with payments and concerns.”

Merkley also addressed the lack of a local call center, which he acknowledged has been “one of the consistent concerns in the community.”

“This is something we take seriously,” Merkley said. “We’ve explored options to establish one within Buncombe County, but local staffing challenges have made it difficult to implement at this time.”

For now, all customer calls go through FCC’s centralized call center, “where most inquiries are resolved quickly,” he said. “If a call requires escalation or a customer specifically requests it, the issue is transferred directly to our local team for resolution.”

I asked Edwards if she felt like the county made a mistake in switching to FCC, as WastePro had certainly had its issues over the years but seemed to have settled into a groove.

“That’s a loaded question,” she said with a laugh.

Hey, maybe I like my journalistic questions and my baked potatoes the same way: loaded.

“I think the county had developed a great working relationship with WastePro over the years, and I am hopeful that we can develop that same kind of terrific working relationship with FCC,” Edwards said, mentioning one WastePro manager in particular who was always helpful. “Because I think that relationship will be key to addressing the challenges that our residents who are using FCC services are facing.”

Edwards encourages customers experiencing problems to reach out to her or other commissioners. Edwards’ email is amanda.edwards@buncombecounty.org

The other commissioners’ emails follow the same pattern: firstname.lastname@buncombecounty.org

Edwards would like to see FCC address the call center issue, and the lack of local workers to respond to problems.

“That is one frustration that I hear over and over and over — I’m getting people who don’t understand Buncombe County,” Edwards said. “And also that emails go unanswered.”

For his part, Hinkley said he is glad his long garbage nightmare seems to be over. He hopes they continue to work on what he calls the breakdown in communications between accounts and actual service.

“It was pretty comical,” he said now that the worst of it is in his rear view mirror.

Hinkley also thinks there’s little point now in backing out of the deal with FCC.

“If everyone’s had so much of a headache and finally things seem to be working, it almost seems like we should just let it be,” Hinkley said. “But every customer should get some sort of rebate or something.”

I suspect a timely rebate will be harder to get than a trash bin.

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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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