Im thinking about changing over to charging for all pickups. I currently pickup appliances, metal, ewaste, clothing/shoes for free and give quotes on trash removal. The free model has its benefits mainly that it gets your foot in the door, customers see you have the equipment/skills and do a good job so they call you again and hopefully pay you for a trash removal job. The drawback is that sometimes people get the wrong impression about your service and view it more as a charity. If you pick something up for free the customer feels that they are doing you a favor and dont value your labor, gas, time, etc.. Sometimes it is totally worth it to pick for free and other time it is not. Sometimes customers want a discount on trash removal because they are giving you recyclables.
I know if I start charging for everything I will loose many of one type of customer (the customers that are attracted to the free pickup) but, I might gain a new type of customer (a customer that wants to pay and get the job done professionally). I want to bump up my professional game by accepting credit card payments (just got setup today), revising my ads, upgrading uniform, insurance and build a website. My theory is that a lot of businesses and residential people that have money and want to spend on junk removal, dont go to the free pickup ads because perhaps they think the quality of the service isnt as good as the companies that charge. And its weird, when I charge people for additional services they seem to respect me more than if I just did it for free. Its weird you are respected and you get paid for the labor.
Has anyone gone from a partial free pricing model to a pricing model where you charge for everything? If so how did it work out for you?
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