Allied Waste Services Consolidated Disposal Services, deceptive practices, onerous cancellation fees Santa Fe Springs, California

I recently fired my apartment management company and took over management of a building  I've owned for years. I called CDS, the waste removal company, to request a change of address so I could receive all future bills. Calls were not returned but eventually I was referred to our sales rep who said we needed to fill out some forms with our address and contact information.  We were faxed a form and I filled it out and provided a deposit because it was the only way they would forward us our bills.

My first bill came two months later and the rate was significantly higher than what my management company had paid in the previous bill. I called and sent e-mails to find out what the problem was. The company wouldn't reduce the rate but told me that we were receiving 3 times a week pick up when twice a week was considered normal for a building of that size. I then asked the rep to please find out who had requested 3 times a week pick up and why. He never called back. In the mean time, I received quotes from various other companies, who all said twice a week pickup was what they would recommend for our building, at a considerably lower rate than we were being charged.

A week later, after hearing nothing from our rep, I called and said I wanted to terminate service and what I needed to do to proceed. I was then told that the forms I'd been faxed to change our adress constituted a 3 year contract with a 6 month penalty clause. After reading the fine print, I found that the contract is automatically renewable for successive 36 month terms unless the customer gives written notice of termination at least 60 days before the end of the then current term. Following that, I contacted my old management company and was told that there was no remaining time left on their old agreement with Consolidated Disposal Services. Moreover, the termination notice is void unless sent via certified mail, return receipt requested, and actually received by the company. In other words, the termination notice doesn't count unless they say so.

I am currently reviewing the contract with a lawyer.