A Melbourne mother was dumped in front of her garage door by a rubbish collection company after a dispute over a bill.
Laura Maultby and her partner Jarrod came home this week to find 26 mattresses stacked in their driveway after they hired Junk.com.au to remove some old, disintegrating wooden boards from their backyard last Tuesday.
Management at the company, which has branches in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, said the couple was sent a price quote beforehand and it was within their rights to dump the mattresses at the Langwarrin property.
Maultby, however, said the $514 fee took her by surprise.
“When they picked it up and we got the invoice, I went through all the communications and found the price, kind of buried in the paperwork… the price was ambiguous,” he said. Yahoo News Australia.
Junk.com.au owner Richard Furnari said the fee had been agreed in advance.
“(Jarrod) contacted our office and was given a written quote of $99 for a two-man pickup in a truck and $190 per cubic foot for waste,” Furnari said.
‘He (Jarrod) said he didn’t know exactly how much wood he had before harvesting.’
A Melbourne couple came home this week to find these mattresses lying around their house.
Laura Maultby said she was shocked to see a $514 bill for which some old wooden planks were removed.
Furnari claimed it was eight cubic feet of wood, but Maultby said it was less than half that, about one cubic meter.
The dumping of an equivalent amount of waste on a customer’s property in the event of non-payment is included in the terms and conditions of the Junk.com.au website.
‘In the event that the supplier has not been paid in full (and payment arrangements have not been made) after a reasonable period of time: the customer agrees that the supplier may dump an amount of rubbish similar to that originally picked up at the customer’s site address without notification,’ the terms state.
Mr Furnari told Daily Mail Australia he had already processed the wood and advised Jarrod he would return the equivalent value of waste ’26 mattresses at $20 each (recycling costs are the $520 he owes) before for his staff to deliver them.
It has since said the mattresses will be collected on Friday and it will instead lodge the unpaid bill with the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).
Daily Mail Australia has requested additional comment from Ms Maultby.