It has been five months since the City of Shakopee made the transition from Republic Services to Dick's Sanitation Inc. (DSI). A representative from DSI will be joining us to provide an overview on the transition process, as well as an update on some of the recent issues they have been experiencing. A few of the more common and significant issues for discussion will include: 

• Transitional data: a considerable amount of time was spent in December and January, and again over the last several weeks, ensuring that residents possess the correct equipment and are being billed for the correct services. Also, many residential properties were found to not have service at all, so both DSI and city staff have spent a considerable amount of time working with upset residents that do not want refuse service. More recently, many residents that opted into yard waste pickup with the previous hauler have been experiencing challenges getting their yard waste picked up so far this season. DSI will discuss their audit process and the progress that has been made to correct these issues. 

• Billing: recently incorrect notices were sent to roughly 900 customers stating that their accounts were past due, when the accounts were paid current and the customers had not previously received any past due notice. This was investigated and found to be due to an issue in the customer-supplied data for online billing (on the DSI side), and has since been corrected. DSI sent individual notices to the customers affected.  

• Customer service tools: many customers have experienced long wait times and/or have been unable to contact DSI by phone. There was an influx of calls after the previously mentioned billing issues that actually caused the phone lines to sporadically crash, so for a one-week period reaching DSI by phone seemed nearly impossible for customers. Reaching customer service was a common complaint before that time and has continued after that time due to several other factors as well. DSI has instituted a Shakopee-specific customer service email as an additional means of communications. 

Representatives from DSI will be present to discuss these challenges, what actions have been taken to remedy these and other issues both in the short and long-term, and additional plans for the future.