Following some work completed in collaboration with Merton Council, it is now possible to apply discount schemes to bulky waste services through WasteWorks.
As with all features of WasteWorks, this new functionality can be modified to accommodate different councils’ individual workflows and charging models.
For example, Merton came to us with a request to be able to offer a free bulky waste collection to properties meeting a specific criteria (in this case: no free collection used within the past 12 months and 3 or fewer items) through its WasteWorks service.
To facilitate this without the need for any manual intervention from council staff, we configured WasteWorks to be able to store and validate the last used free bulky collection date on a per-property basis, and check how many items were included within the booking. If both conditions are met, the discounted booking can proceed, otherwise the standard chargeable workflow applies.
In instances where a bulky collection is amended by staff and items are added to a free bulky collection that cause the collection to exceed 3 items, then the booking is turned into a “paid for” collection, charged the standard fee set by the council, and the free collection remains available to use later.
Also in-keeping with the Merton’s criteria, if residents cancel their free booking 7 or more days before the scheduled collection date, the free booking will be made available for later use, but a cancellation less than 7 days before the scheduled date will mark the free collection as used.
After placing a free collection booking, WasteWorks will send a confirmation email to residents, plus regular reminder emails to help minimise missed collections and avoidable contact.
Similarly, Merton also wanted to be able to easily change the criteria for a free/discounted bulky waste collection. To enable this, we added some new sections to WasteWorks’ admin interface.
Now, when logged into WasteWorks, council staff with the appropriate permissions can turn the discount scheme on and off, modify the number of months allowed between discounted collection dates, set the number of items allowed, and set the price of a free/discounted collection.
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In addition to discount schemes, WasteWorks also helps councils handle a variety of other pricing changes associated with waste services. Read more in this blog post, or contact us for a demo.
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