Give it to me….the good, the bad, the ugly with valet trash

Give it to me….the good, the bad, the ugly with valet trash. My community is signing up with Valet Living and I’m curious of everyone’s experience and opinions on the added amenity. Thanks!

I don’t personally like it… it’s an additional admin burden to enforce and a common resident complaint is they’d rather take out their own trash, but it’s a mandatory fee for everyone so they have to use it. Depending on a residents schedule some may not even benefit if they can’t put trash out during the pick up times.
I’m happier without it from an on site perspective

I live in a building that runs the program really well. It’s multiple 4 story buildings with two staircases and 1 elevator per building.
I get monthly emails reminding us of rules. We get text alerts on holiday schedule changes reminding us not to set out trash can.
The program runs well. I don’t see cans out during non service hours. My hallway is clean.
The trash compactor isn’t super close to my apartment so I don’t mind the service fee.

Residents don’t follow the rules, but Valet Living actually hosts an open house with light food for the residents and the “complainers” attended. They were feeling better about the service after that.

I loved having Valet Trash as a resident. As a manager you have to manage it like anything else. If someone left trash out they got a fine in my building
Set the rules and execute them
Valet also has the best of the best people! They are a very good company
SOLID 💚

Check and see if you can have the valet living app included in your agreement. It doesn’t solve everything but it does help you hold the resident accountable with them signing up for the app and reporting service issues through it directly to Valet Living. I live onsite personally and I have the all push notifications on so it lets me know when to put trash out, when trash has started, and when its last call which they can report if there were missed at that time.

Cool concept if they actually had a trash buggie to roll around that climbed stairs or whatever to eliminate trash juice. But they dont. Trash juice all up in the breezeways/hallways. Bugs. Odor from trash. Trash violations that SHOULDNT be violations OR someone should be violated but isnt. We had one lady come in saying she got a violation for her trash being too light. TOO LIGHT?!?! EXCUUUSE ME?!

My experience with them as a resident has been good.

Hate Valet Living and their team! I used them for 4 years and ended up having to get out of the contract and now using a new company that I love. VL would do what’s called “staging” which means one guy would gather the trash and leave it on the ground in a pile in front of the buildings. Another guy is supposed to ride by and pick it up BUT they forgot every single night which left huge piles of trash all around my community. Then a lot of residents would complain that their trash was missed. Upper management would sound concerned but never followed up and fixed the problem. They attempted to have one last meeting with me and I was then able to vent and tell them how I felt about their service. It was HORRIBLE!!!! Don’t use Valet Living.

Both properties I’ve dealt with it on has been a nightmare. Made our breezeways trashy, more work for us with violations, horrible. Don’t get me started on the animals, no matter the little time the trash is out. But… properties with indoor breezeways and elevators… much better experiences.

I'd like to hear the good and bad of this too, as my property is also considering this service

Yes as a resident and pm professional, I don’t like it.
You can’t opt out. Residents miss trash pick up. Trash sits in halls and stinks and stains.
Issues with the valet saying they came but didn’t.
I don’t have the time to be Amazon, to be trash valet etc. It just adds to my already busy list.
Again for me as a resident, I’d rather take my trash out myself and save $25 a month.

Valet trash by any company, you’re going to have issues, not one is perfect. You have to manage your resident and the vendor about the same amount of time. The vendor issues I’ve dealt with are lack of reliable staff, therefore creating thorough pick up issues and weather issues, when they should not be issues.

Let me say I wish the admins of the group wouldn't let anonymous posters speak badly about companies. If you've had a bad experience or you're really just wanting feedback, then as professionals we should all be able to speak freely and show our faces. With valet trash, I've had a bad experience with a company I won't name here and Valet Living fortunately got me out of a very bad situation. Valet Living has been a good partner not only with the trash but helping me with events, they have an app that communicates directly with my residents, and I have local people to reach out to. It's also the PM's responsibility to ensure the residents follow the times, etc. This is a nice amenity to offer and a great income. If it's ran correctly with a good partner, should not be a headache or additional work for the community team.