In the great area where I live, we have a leaf collection service where large trucks with giant vacuum cleaners suck up the piles of leaves we have at our curbs. They come around 3 times a year. Well, last year they skipped the third pickup so nobody got their leaves picked up because us logical people wait until they actually fall off the trees to rake them. Eventually they got ground up and swept away with the rain. No matter!
This year, there was a bright and shiny sign at the entrance to our neighborhood announcing the pickup on the 1st. The 1st rolls around, no leaves picked up. Drat, we actually raked them early this year. 2nd, no pickup. Repeat until today, the 8th. An entire week late. Too bad nobody was expecting them so everyone parked on the street. We have very limited parking in my area because a couple houses have no driveways and were lucky enough to get a big fat no parking sign in front of their house. People intentionally parked away from the piles for a couple of days to let them suck them up, but since they never came, everyone went back to parking in front of them. So now, only about a third of the piles were picked up, and only half of my pile. I'm sick of parallel parking between a car and an invisible mass behind me. They also skipped the most important pile in the neighborhood, at the very entrance to the neighborhood the owners always have a HUGE pile right on the corner so everyone taking a right on to that street has to go up the middle, risking hitting people who are coming down that street. Yet they took the sign that was directly in front of that pile. Thanks guys! All the other services we have are great, I have the best mailman in the world and the trash guys are efficient and don't leave the cans laying in the middle of the street like the last guys, the newspaper is always there and on the front walk, but the pickup people never seem to get it. We had a 4 foot pile of bamboo on our front lawn for three weeks because they never came by on the several dates we scheduled. Not only did it slowly kill the grass, it inconvenienced the guys across the street who had to park several houses down because we would request they not park in front of the pile until it was gone. All the services tend to be paid for with taxes, but large trash pickup like the bamboo is paid for separately.
Anyway, I consider a service paid for by our taxes to at least be within a couple days of when they say they'll come by. A week late and an incomplete job annoy me. I guess maybe it's a favor, they sell us the leaves back in the spring as mulch so they just saved some gardeners a few bucks.