SEATTLE — Heads up for Seattle residents: you may want to check your Seattle Public Utilities garbage bill.
Some homeowners say they are seeing extra fees for bags of trash they didn’t put out, but SPU officials say that isn’t the case.
Capitol Hill homeowner Elizabeth Forsyth tells us she has been noticing extra bag charges on her bill on and off for years.
“Sometimes our extra garbage charges are $70; on the last bill, we were charged for multiple extra bags of garbage,” Forsyth said.
She tells us her neighbors are feeling that pain too.
“One of my neighbors said he had $350 of charges in the last five bills,” Forsyth said.
For example, on February 18, Forsyth showed us her SPU bill, where she was charged $27.90 for two extra bags of trash.
She pulled her ring video from that day to show us her bins. It shows they are placed outside her garage with the lids closed and no extra trash beside them.
“Because this keeps happening to us, I never put out extra garbage, so I can say I’m sorry that charge is wrong,” Forsyth said.
For the past five years, Sally Hulsman with Seattle Public Utilities says they averaged about $8 million of “extra” charges per year.
“It’s critical we charge accurately; we don’t believe there is fraud in the system, so we would want people to call us if they thought there was something on their bill that doesn’t make sense,” Hulsman said.
She tells us that if a customer repeatedly sees charges and calls to report them, SPU will eventually start taking pictures of any extra trash bags to show when they are there.
Forsyth said she has complained about multiple charges and has not received pictures.
Hulsman says they are updating their process for charging fees.
“We are working on a system where we can alert customers to where there are extras and continue to look and evaluate how we are doing this service,” Hulsman said.
Forsyth says the charges need to stop until a system to show proof is in place.
“I think they should be taking photos, they should be emailing you when it happens. I think if they started taking photos, this would just go away, because these are not real charges,” Forsyth said.
SPU said they don’t believe the charges are wrong but welcome people to call them if they feel something is incorrect.
Officials say if you were to have any charges on your SPU utility bill for extra trash in these bins, they would be on the third page.
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