Brookfield City Reports Long Call Holds With Waste Management

BROOKFIELD, WI — The City of Brookfield says its experiencing long wait times and disconnections when calling Waste Management call centers.

"For those residents frustrated with the excessively long wait times when calling Waste Management for service issues, we share your concerns," the city said Monday.

Tom Grisa, director of Brookfield's public works, says that the call center issue started a couple of months ago. "I've been in contact with some of the folks in charge of that call center and was told that call center not only handles the state of Wisconsin, but other states as well," he said.

Staffing shortages have led to call center delays and also delays in garbage collection.

"I've been told they were adding 29 additional people to their call center and then going to a local model early this month," said Grisa. "That was the plan back in May."

Grisa said the vast majority of residents are having their garbage collected, but there are more people without their garbage collected than there have been in the past. He also cited that usually 30-40 homes are missed per month out of 15,000 homes in Brookfield.

The city said that people should try a calling an alternative number when contacting Waste Management or to email the company's customer support instead.

"In the meantime, Waste Management has informed us that they are working diligently toward
a better end result for the city and the residents by migrating the calls to their second call
center location in Germantown," the city said. "In addition, they are graduating additional Customer Service Representatives to the phones in several weeks to reduce wait times."

The City of New Berlin also reported that Waste Management worked as late as 8 p.m. in its streets Friday to catch missed pickups.