Hippo Bag

We recently renovated our front garden and thought Hippo Bags provided an economic and convenient alternative to skip hire. That was until we tried to arrange collection.

Like many people who live in a busy urban area there are a large number of cars parked in our street. We don't usually know who owns the parked cars and have little control over who parks outside our house. It's a fairly normal picture for city dwellers but this appears to cause Hippo an insurmountable problem.

The people from Hippo arrived early this morning to collect our bag and refused to take it. The bag is within the stipulated four metres from the point they need to make the collection but they have refused to pick the bag up because there are parked cars in the street.

I rang the customer service helpline, thinking they would face this problem on a regular basis and have a solution - but they don't appear to understand the realities of city living.

We've offered to move the bag into the road, if they can give us 24 hours notice before pick-up. That doesn't satisfy the Hippo people. They want us to ensure that there are no parked cars near the bag. Now as every urbanite knows, you can put cones, wheelie bins and signs in the street but people will move them in their desperation to park. It seems that unless I put my husband on centaury duty for 24 hours to stop any cars parking near the bag we'll be keeping the Hippo in our front garden. I've always fancied a pet, but not a big yellow Hippo.

Rather than economical and convenient the Hippo Bag is proving to be a real time waster. They are going to attempt a second collection, if this fails we'll have to fork out for another supplier.

website. www.hippowaste.co.uk

We bought it from B&Q - I think we paid £11 for the bag and £36 for collection.