How to renew your garden waste collection in 12 easy steps

I have had a garden waste collection service from Kingston Council for a few years now and every year the convoluted renewal process annoys me so this year I thought that I would record it step by step.

This is the web page that the renewal letter (not an email) from the Council tells you to go to.

There is a big Subscribe button and no mention of renewal, but this is the right place.

Press Subscribe.

I am an existing customer but the system pretends, for the moment, that it does not know me and starts an address search.

If you are asking for house number and post code then you do not need the full address too. No other website I can think of does this.

Success, it has found me!

Sorry, it has not found me, it has only found my address.

Now it needs to do a second search to find the service at that address, the one that I am here to renew.

We both agree that I have one garden waste bin.

For reasons that escape me, at this point, in the middle of the process, it decides to ask me if I really want to do this.

Basically this is the same screen as the one two back where we both agreed that I have one garden waste bin that I wish to renew.

No, I have not changed my mind since you last asked me two screens ago.

A payment request, now we are getting somewhere!

I minor point but the payment process is embedded in the renewal process and behaves differently. The dark blue square buttons are now rounded and light blue, and Next has been replaced by Continue.

I was about time we had another confirmation screen. This is number three.

All done and the transaction is confirmed.

Note that in this dialogue it uses the word "Confirmation" to mean both "your confirmation is required" and "our confirmation is given".

Saying Thank You is so important that it gets a screen of its own when saying that on the confirmation screen would have done the job.