WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – Local redemption centers say it has been a headache working with a company they say doesn’t communicate. On at least one occasion, they say payments have been late. Other times, they claim they’ve been shorted.
Makes Cents Redemption Center goes through about 500,000 bottles and cans.
“It’s going down through there and it’s reading the barcode of every container,” said co-owner Bill Huchzermeier.
It’s quite the operation, but Huchzermeier says it can’t get done without the cooperation of the company it works through, TOMRA.
“They pick them up from us after we separate them and bag them in the right bags. Then they pay us on behalf of either Pepsi, or Walmart, or whoever,” he said.
But Huchzermeier says a lack of communication and lack of payments are causing frustration.
He says a payment worth more than $40,000 was days late and a few dollars short. He says he got some of the deposit on Monday instead of Friday, but believes it’s not all of it.
“Out of that $42,000, we need to buy cans and bottles the next week and we need to make payroll. I wasn’t able to do either one of those without going to the bank and borrowing money on Friday,” said Huchzermeier.
It’s a similar story at Phinn A Bay Redemption. Operator Nickie Phinney says communication is virtually non-existent and they’ve been shorted on multiple payments.
“Every time we send a trailer, there’s a shortage on it somehow. Whether they’re telling us cans are mixed, then they’re paying us less for those cans, or they’re just completely shorting us for bags that are on there,” said Phinney.
According to its website, TOMRA has been hit by a cyberattack. But both Huchzermeier and Phinney claim these issues have been going on prior to that incident.
“We have an amazing team here but we also need our payments to come in correctly so we can keep everybody else paid,” said Phinney.
We reached out to TOMRA representatives, but have not heard back yet. We’ll update this story if we hear from them.
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