A trash removal company in California has come under scrutiny after a video surfaced showing its workers dumping garbage onto a customer’s front lawn, reportedly due to an unpaid bill.
Express Rental Dumpster, based in the Bay Area, claims that the residents of a house in San Pablo had rented a dumpster for debris removal but experienced issues with payment. The credit card provided for the transaction was allegedly declined, according to a report by KTVU.
“Their card was declined,” said Martin Perez, the company’s owner, in an interview with the station. “They kept promising, ‘I’ll pay later, I’ll pay later,’ but they never did. They would say, ‘I’ll put money on the card so you can charge it.’ Just this past Monday, we tried to process the payment again. When we called, they said, ‘Oh, I forgot.'”
The incident was captured on a Ring doorbell camera. Initially, the footage shows a truck operator conversing with someone off-camera. He then opened the back of his dump truck, allowing some trash to spill onto the yard. Afterward, he moved the truck closer to the property and proceeded to unload the entire contents of the dumpster onto the lawn.
In the video, a man emerges from the house and can be heard shouting expletives in Spanish at the truck driver.
At one point, a man appears to emerge from the home and yell profanities in Spanish in the direction of the dump truck.
Perez said he already lost money on the dumpster delivery and pickup and would have to pay hundreds more in dumping fees if he took the trash to the dump, KTVU reported.
Police later responded to the scene and required the driver to remove debris from the edge of the sidewalk onto the property, the station added.
A neighbor told KTVU that the homeowner claimed to have paid for the dumpster.
“She says she paid $700 for it, and then, all of a sudden, I see him back up and dump it all on the ground. I don’t really know what that was about,” the neighbor said.
Police in San Pablo, Calif., later showed up to the scene after the trash was dumped on the homeowner’s property. (Julio via Storyful)
The pile of trash reportedly was cleaned up and covered by a neighbor after being picked through by scavengers.
