Panda price increase again.

Phil.x

Got this in the door today.

colm_mcm

Are you dumping 67kg a week, or are you leaving it a few weeks then putting the bin out?

Phil.x

colm_mcm wrote: »

Are you dumping 67kg a week, or are you leaving it a few weeks then putting the bin out?

Every three weeks.

colm_mcm

Do they charge per lift or just a fixed monthly charge?

Like could you just dump 160kg a month instead of 50kg a month just by putting the bin out more regularly and not pay more?

the_barfly1

Panda charge somewhere in the region of a tenner per lift on top of the annual fee.
40kg seems very light for a maximum weight for something that can be wheeled about. A bag of cement is 25kg.

ongarite

Is there anywhere on the Panda website, My Panda, where you can check the weight of your last lifts?

I can only see my invoices with standard charge for 240L bin lift.

Toto Wolfcastle

ongarite wrote: »

Is there anywhere on the Panda website, My Panda, where you can check the weight of your last lifts?

I can only see my invoices with standard charge for 240L bin lift.

They definitely used to have something like that because we used it to figure out our potential costs during the pay by weight debacle but we looked again last week and couldn't find it.

Phil.x

colm_mcm wrote: »

Do they charge per lift or just a fixed monthly charge?

Like could you just dump 160kg a month instead of 50kg a month just by putting the bin out more regularly and not pay more?

Charge per lift, about 8.75 and 120 per year.
Also they've a captive market, they're owned by green star who don't operate here and red bin/city bin don't do my area of clonsilla.

ThisRegard

ongarite wrote: »

Is there anywhere on the Panda website, My Panda, where you can check the weight of your last lifts?

I can only see my invoices with standard charge for 240L bin lift.

The history of each bin lift and weight used to be there, I checked earlier and it's gone. Coincidence?

jack presley

Interesting article in the Jornal about this.

http://www.thejournal.ie/bin-charges-heavy-bins-companies-pay-3393650-May2017/

I thought this was a great point.

One Panda customer told TheJournal.ie that he understands that heavy bins could be a risk but that Panda isn’t stopping their workers lifting these bins, they are now just charging for it.

If they really cared about the wellbeing of their workers, they'd put a complete limit of 40kg on the bins. But instead they're saying we care about the health of workers up to a point and then money talks.

Zaph

Fair enough that the guy who averaged 90kg in his bin every lift was probably taking the p*ss a bit (he must have been loading it with breeze blocks), but given that Panda have now removed the weights of each lift from their website it's pretty unfair on people to be expected to know what 40kg is. My black bin only goes out once every 5-6 weeks, and sometimes it's a bit heavier depending on what I've put in it, but I have no way of knowing if I've gone over the limit and will be charged extra. This is just a pure money-making racket, and unfortunately like many others I have no alternative to Panda so they can basically just hold people to ransom.

miamee

Phil.x wrote: »

Charge per lift, about 8.75 and 120 per year.
Also they've a captive market, they're owned by green star who don't operate here and red bin/city bin don't do my area of clonsilla.

Interesting; we're paying €9.05 per lift but €110 annual charge (2 x €55).

Knowing how heavy the bins are at the moment would surely help to figure out how often you should be putting it out to avoid overweight charges or whether going with the 27.7c per kg over 40kg would work out better.

Former Former

jack presley wrote: »

Interesting article in the Jornal about this.

http://www.thejournal.ie/bin-charges-heavy-bins-companies-pay-3393650-May2017/

I thought this was a great point.

One Panda customer told TheJournal.ie that he understands that heavy bins could be a risk but that Panda isn’t stopping their workers lifting these bins, they are now just charging for it.

If they really cared about the wellbeing of their workers, they'd put a complete limit of 40kg on the bins. But instead they're saying we care about the health of workers up to a point and then money talks.

I'm not sure that adds up.

They can't know how heavy the bins are until they get them onto the lifting gear to begin with. So by the time they realise that the bin is overweight, the health and safety risk has already happened.

The alternative is that the collectors take a guess at whether it's over or under 40kg, and then leave it uncollected on the kerb if they reckon it's too heavy. Not sure that works for either party.

The best way to convince people (or Irish people, anyway) to do something is to incentivise them financially, or penalise them for not doing it. 40kg doesn't sound like a very generous limit but I can understand why Panda would have some sort of limit.

jack presley

In today's litigious society, they are also opening themselves up to claims from their workers.

They state that the workers are at risk by manoeuvering bins over 40kg but they still allow them to handle them. The duty on employers is to eliminate risks where possible and charging a deterrent fee doesn't go far enough in my opinion.

Former Former

jack presley wrote: »

In today's litigious society, they are also opening themselves up to claims from their workers.

They state that the workers are at risk by manoeuvering bins over 40kg but they still allow them to handle them. The duty on employers is to eliminate risks where possible and charging a deterrent fee doesn't go far enough in my opinion.

So what do you do?

How do you gauge the weight of a bin without lifting it?

pxdf9i5cmoavkz

What the hell are you loading into your bin?? 68KG is a lot.

jack presley

Former Former wrote: »

So what do you do?

How do you gauge the weight of a bin without lifting it?

I don't know. Panda shouldn't have used h&s as the reason for the extra charge though.

They could have made up some other excuse (extra fuel in trucks or some other reason for increased costs) but one they bring h&s into it they've opened up a can of worms.

January

We pay 70.50 every three months for black bin to go out every week and green and brown every two weeks

Phil.x

January wrote: »

We pay 70.50 every three months for black bin to go out every week and green and brown every two weeks

That's expensive

ongarboy

Slightly off topic but this is a fairly unusual complaint.  Twice in the last couple of months, someone has put out my black bin on Monday mornings when it was no where near even half full meaning I got charged the 9 euro per lift each time.  I would obviously only put it out when it was full.  I asked my nearby neighbours to see if they accidentally put out my bin even though I have large reflective stickers with my door number clearly labelled on the bins and they hadn't.   This would never have been a problem with the old paper tag system as the binmen wouldn't take the bin without a tag but now as it's all done electronically, they'll just collect it regardless. 

I'm just wondering if some gurrier is playing tricks putting random bins out and trying to figure out how I can handle this.  I was away this Monday so didn't notice it put out.  If it was a once off, I'd have let it go but this is the second time now in as many months. Half thinking of getting a bike lock to chain the bins together but does anyone have any other suggestions?
Edit, I should note, my bins are stored in a communal public area so I don't have the option of keeping them on my own property.

ongarite

Got txt from Panda yesterday with the following link in it:
https://www.panda.ie/panda-terms-and-conditions-june-2017.pdf

miamee

ongarite wrote: »

Got txt from Panda yesterday with the following link in it:
https://www.panda.ie/panda-terms-and-conditions-june-2017.pdf

I got that myself a week or two ago but only getting around to reading it now. I didn't realise ashes weren't permitted in brown bin, I always put them in wrapped in newspaper...whoops