hello everyone, I live in UK and have a ‘holiday home’ maison secondaire’, in the 36 region. I have just recieved my
‘Facturation Ordures Menageres’ for 6 months of 84,66 euros with another bill of the same to follow later in the year.
We spend maybe 6- 8 weeks a year there and the bin is emptied maybe 4 times in that time! this seems a little over expensive, does anyone know if it is possible to cancel the bin or even get a reduction?
Thanks Jenny
There is no harm in trying.
You are certainly not the first holiday home owner to find this expensive.
But it is not certain that any reduction will be agreed. The old pattern thinking seems to be that the service is provided to everybody and it is up to them whether they use it or not. The cost of sending the collection service out is the same regardless of how many people use it, so they share it out equally between everybody.
But many communes are introducing a different system where you pay according to the amount of waste you produce. You would be better off under this system, if and when your commune introduces it.
The rubbish charge covers more than just emptying your personal bin, the company will be carrying out other activities keeping streets clean, doing some gully sucking and emptying the public bins in the commune for example.
It is your choice only to spend 8 weeks a year in your house - you can ask for a rebate but I imagine you will get a dusty answer! We live in our house all year, but only create a few litres of rubbish a week. Our neighbours have an overflowing bin each week and we all pay the same. The system is currently set up this way. Like us you will probably have to wait until the personalised billing comes in.
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Make sure your place is correctly classified - though the fact that you received the bill in the UK suggests that it is.
We’re in the same boat - though our bill is a bit bigger, rubbish is collected once every two weeks and we *always* seem to arrive on a week off so use only one or two collections a year, but it pays for access to the déchetterie which we do use a fair bit.
Somewhat guiltily our rubbish at the end of a stay usually gets dumped in a facility just up the road from us designed for passing camper van users. Guiltily because it’s provided by a different communauté de communautés.
Chances are it’s factored in - well, sort of. We pay for 6 collections rather than 12 but our bill is only smaller than that for résidences principales by the per-collection fee times 6 (it is possible to have more collections, they just get added to the bill).
At least you dump it in a facility! At end of tourist season here the mess is appalling. Includimg one time walkimg alomg a small forest road to find a camper van had emptied their toilet beside the road 
. Plenty of facilities nearby but I guess they couldn’t be arsed. Appreciated our natural area and then polluted it for the next people…
Yes, it never ceases to amaze me just how messy humans are 
The alternative is to head to the déchetterie but that’s 16km in the wrong direction and not open on a Sunday, so there’s always a little residual rubbish to get rid of, so it’s easier just to put whatever we have (it’s never that much) into the bins provided.
They moved it a while ago in favour of creating a picnic area next to the river, rather than a dump site so it’s about half a mile away from this spot now.
As it happens the bill was waiting for me on the mat when I got home - 105€ for the year, up 10€ on last year so quite a hike and 84,66€ seems good value.
As said different communes have their ways of dealing with this. Whether you use the service or not you’d usually have to pay the service charge, being in the collective, bit like the water /electricité etc. bill, if you use then if over the standard you pay more but the service charge stays the same, in most cases.
Here’s how it works for us.
http://www.vezelay.fr/site/IMG/pdf/grille_tarifaire_particuliers_2022.pdf
Just adding my two-pennorth to what everyone else has said. Our house was a maison secondaire until 6 or 7 years ago and we paid the standard charge regardless of how long we were there. It’s a very common mistake to assume that community-type charges in France should be calculated on an individual basis as many now are in the UK (but didn’t used to be pre-Thatcher) but France is a country in which society, at all its levels, is very important. Charges for many things are decided on a communal, not individual basis.
Having now got used to this idea, I think it is actually as good one - and we certainly benefit from this approach when looking at e.g. healthcare top-up insurance 
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