Clements Environmental Services Inc - Santa Fe Springs, California

Richard Shin

An employee named Paul Jewell has caused my business to suffer for the past 2 years. Clements Environmental Services seems to be one of those companies that advocate for fraudulent salesman tactics considering that they keep the employee Paul Jewell. Paul Jewell claims to be a representative for Universal Waste Systems and he was the one who signed us into contract with UWS.

First, he claimed that the new Californian organics bin program was mandatory as of the year 2022 and threatened me that I would receive penalties if I didn't have it on the property. I accepted the conditions and had the organics bin plus the waste/recycling bin put on property. For the first two months, we had never even used the bin because we did not produce any food waste which alerted my concern that they were not servicing my bin. Then it goes missing for 3 months and when I address this to Paul Jewell verbally, he claims that he will replace it for us. For the next 3 months, we do not get an invoice from UWS which I then question them for them to tell me it was a system glitch. Without my knowledge they charged me for all those 3 months including the organics bin when I received an invoice for those 3 months. I tell them that their "representative" Paul Jewell was going to replace it for us and let them know and best believe they told me that this person does not work for them and that he never went on-site besides the day he signed us into UWS' contract. Looking back to the contract, I also noticed he supposedly conducted a food waste assessment that determines if we produce enough food to be placed under the organics program. This is impossible because we hadn't even been open during the signing of this contract.

Because of this I was unable to prove that Paul verbally told us that he'd take care of it so I took my losses for the past 5 months. Since at this point, I am aware of Paul's and UWS shady business, I decided to deliberately place fresh food into the organics bin. Sure enough, I've gathered surveillance evidence for 5 months that they had not serviced our bin. Unfortunately, food rots meaning we eventually had an maggot infestation because UWS won't service a bin that we had been paying for the past one and a half years. I had been sending complaints to UWS throughout the entire 2 years of my business to service it.

After further research, we found out that the organics bin will start enforcing its penalty beginning of January 2024. hearing this, I told UWS to get rid of the organics bin to which they actually accepted. Coincidentally enough, I get a direct call from Paul that it is not possible to remove the organics bin at all and that there wasn't anything I could do. I directly emailed Paul Jewell to take accountability for his mistakes that directly affected our entire business. Sure enough we did not receive an email back. If he had done so, then I wouldn't have reported his behavior, but now seeing what kind of establishment Paul works at, I'm leaving this as a warning to all consumers who come into relations with this business.

In hindsight, I believe that Paul Jewell took advantage of my young age and inexperience in this first business. This whole situation was extremely disappointing and discouraging seeing that someone could exploit an especially younger person.

Info Planta

A little while ago Kenia came by our business in Highland Park and told us that we could upgrade the size of our recycling bin for free. Now our bins are no longer overflowing each week, and we recycle way more. Kenia came back again today and super helpful with showing us what can and can't be recycled. She also left some posters in English and Spanish when I mentioned that I couldn't find bilingual posters.