Why do people feel so comfortable lying to councils?

estebanrey

estebanrey

estebanrey

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As some of you may know, I work for a local authority and part of my job involves investigating complaints that our regular customer service team can't deal with.

I compiled some stats today regarding the number of people who disputed our bin men's logs of "not presented" (i.e your bin was not put out at the edge of your property as proscribed by us) and here are the results...

Number of logs overturned/judged as totally incorrect = 1%

Number of logs where there is a grey area/certain amount of subjectiveness = 9%

Number of logs correct and where the resident has lied = 90%

Most people do not know we have CCTV cameras on our bin lorries, so they report a missed collection, get told by a Customer Service person it wasn't presented and then proceed to reply that the log is wrong and swear they put their bin out on time. At this point it gets passed over to me to retrieve the footage and make a judgement call and 9 times out of 10 the resident has plain out lied.

When I respond with the screen grab I usually don't receive a response. Occasionally the complaint will turn to "how dare you film my house", sometimes they'll come back saying they must have been mistaken and apologise and once I even had someone claim we must have photoshopped the image and were still adamant they'd put the bin out.

I just don't get why so many people are so willing to lie. Before I worked for the local authority I did forget to put my bin out a couple of times. On Both occasions I thought "Damn, my mistake" and then took the rubbish to the dump without hesitation. I never thought "I'll phone up and pretend it was just missed by the crew and then contest it when I rightfully get told it wasn't out."

I've done customer service in the private sector and never saw anywhere near the levels of, let's be honest, attempted fraud as I do working for the public sector.

I can only guess it's down the the mentality that because council tax is a legal requirement and that we're called "public servants" we should do whatever they want, including clearing up after their mistakes.
 
It's almost like Councils aren't really known for competence and employing simpletons that can't get 'proper' jobs or something. Oh wait.
 
Our council state that I must present my green bin for collection from 6.30am
They turn up without fail every 2 weeks at 6.15am
 
doofer said:
It's almost like Councils aren't really known for competence and employing simpletons that can't get 'proper' jobs or something. Oh wait.
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This mentality comes from the 80s where there were levels of high employment and low wages in the public sector. This did lead to councils having to employ the 'leftovers' and sadly this reputation has stuck.

This is not true today though. Most of the people I work with that are my age or younger are degree level educated and could easily find well paying jobs in the private sector. Furthermore my council has been paying the "living wage" for 2 years now so the pay is competitive to say the least.

I think it comes from a mindset that a manager is likely to just think "this isn't worth my time so I'll just send the guys back" which is just wrong (at least where I work).
 
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Sadly, in my experience (with Oxford and Bristol council), they and the people that work for them are ****ing useless, bafflingly so. The sort of fundamental uselessness that makes a man run outside in the middle of the night, break down into tears and shout "WHY?!" profusely at the moon.

I think the attitude is succinctly summarised when one council worker I was dealing with said something along the lines of "well anything will have to be given to us well in advance of midday as we all leave sharp on 5pm at the dot". That wasn't a problem in my circumstance, but it says it all - absolutely no regard to the inconvenience caused to anyone from failing to exert more than the absolute minimal level of effort required in their job.

I mean, how can emails take months to respond to?! No willing customer would ever tolerate that kind of poor customer service.
 
People will always try to 'get one over on authority', even if it's just for bragging rights down the pub.
 
Archeum said:
Should charge them an Administration fee.
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I had a complaint from a lady the other day because we sent her a letter to tell her that she had presented sidewaste with her landfill bin (ergo extra bags that don't fit in the bin which we don't take).

She told us how we were wasting her council tax by sending her the letter as this was the first time she did it and was otherwise a model recycler.

The irony was, the letter cost us around 40p to send in all (they are automatically generated) but her complaining about this had cost around £30 in terms of the time needed to deal with it thus undermining her complaint.
 
I'm always forgetting to put my bin out, and each time I do, I inwardly curse and then drive said refuse to the tip. (Or jump up and down on the rubbish until I can get 4 weeks worth in one bin)
 
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