Casella: reviews, rating and service info

Casella reviews on the BBB and Trustpilot mostly describe missed pickups, carts left behind and charges that continue after cancelling, billing errors and long waits on the phone. Casella collects at a home only under your town’s contract or a subscription you set up yourself, so check your town’s page or Casella’s local provider finder to see who serves your street.

Casella, founded in Rutland, Vermont in 1975, collects trash and recycling for homes, businesses and towns in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states. Its holidays and rules follow each local provider. Enter your town or ZIP code in Casella’s local provider finder, then check your town’s page to see who is assigned.

Where the company collects

Casella’s service alerts page lists eleven states, which is the company’s own claim: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and West Virginia. A state on that list does not mean every town in it. Casella serves homes two ways: under a municipal contract with a town, or as a subscription that a household orders, with service billed in advance. Casella can change a subscriber’s service day with advance notice.

How to tell if it is your hauler

Casella’s residential page asks for your town, city or ZIP code and sends you to the local provider page with its holiday schedule and bill payment. A result means Casella has a provider for that area, not that it collects on your street. Your city or town’s own solid waste page says whether the town hires one hauler or residents choose their own. If you already have an account, the Casella app shows your upcoming trash and recycling pickup dates.

Holiday schedules and service alerts

There is no single national table. The holiday schedule page looks up your location by town or ZIP code, and each provider posts its own shifts. The service alerts page lists weather disruptions by state; where no delay is posted, set materials out on your usual day. The app sends notices about delays, weather, schedule changes and pickup reminders. If a pickup was missed, check the app for alerts, then call Customer Care at 800-CASELLA.

What they collect

Residential service covers non-hazardous trash and recyclables. Radioactive, volatile, corrosive, highly flammable, explosive, biomedical, infectious and hazardous waste is excluded. Casella’s Zero-Sort recycling takes cardboard, paper, plastic bottles and containers, metal cans and foil, and glass bottles and jars, loose, empty and rinsed. Keep out plastic bags, bagged recyclables, textiles, cords and hoses, scrap metal, batteries, electronics, food, liquids and items under 2 to 3 inches. Bulky items and electronics are picked up at the curb on a booked day; the price depends on the item and is quoted when you book. Casella also rents dumpsters.

Customer service

• Customer Care: 800-CASELLA (800-227-3552), for billing, disputed charges, missed pickups and app problems.
• Residential questions: 802-683-3984, Monday to Friday 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Quotes: 888-485-1469, or the quote request form.
• Billing is monthly: if you have any service during a month, Casella bills the whole month, including when you cancel or pause service before the month’s last pickup.

What this is not

It is not a public agency, and a Casella truck on your street does not make it your assigned hauler. A holiday notice or flyer from one Casella town does not apply to another.

Casella reviews and complaints

Casella is not accredited by the BBB, and Casella’s BBB profile gives it a B rating, with the complaints filed against the business as the reason. The profile covers Casella’s Rutland headquarters and its corporate-owned locations. It lists 238 complaints in the last three years, 151 of them closed in the last 12 months. More than half of them, 126, are filed as service or repair issues, and 34 as billing issues. BBB customer reviews of Casella average 1.18 out of 5 from 55 reviews. On Trustpilot, Casella’s profile, which the company has not claimed, has a TrustScore of 1.4 out of 5 from 76 reviews.

The same problems come up again and again in those complaints and reviews:

• missed or half-done pickups, with residents calling several times before a truck comes back;
• cancelling: carts and dumpsters left at the home for weeks after service ends, and invoices that keep coming;
• unexplained charges, double billing and bills that keep rising with added fees;
• customer service that is hard to reach, with long holds and callbacks that do not come.

These are customers’ accounts, not findings of ours. A company-wide total mixes many local operations across the Northeast, so it says little about the crew on one street: your town’s page says who is assigned there.

On Trashbagging

Check the city first: States & Cities. No Trashbagging city edition names Casella yet. State hubs for the states on Casella’s list: Connecticut · Delaware · Maine · Maryland · Massachusetts · New Hampshire · New Jersey · New York · Pennsylvania · Vermont · West Virginia.

Context photo: Recycling and waste sorting stations at Moscone Center in San Francisco. Intel Free Press, 2013-09-02. CC BY 2.0 · Source. Resized for web.