Why do so many skip firms still hide their prices?
In almost every other sector, customers now expect transparency. You can book a van, order a sofa or buy your weekly shop online in minutes. Yet in waste, it’s still: “Fill in a form for a quote” or worse, “Ring us up.” Imagine if you had to phone Amazon every time you wanted to know the price of an item. It’s absurd.
This is the ecommerce age. If your website makes customers jump through hoops to find out what a skip costs, you may as well be giving them a link to your competitors who do publish their prices.
And no, the usual excuses don’t wash. “Prices vary, waste types differ” – that’s not a reason to avoid transparency for consumer skips. The truth is many firms are scared to compete on anything other than price. They don’t trust customers to make value-based decisions, so they play secret squirrel with the one number people want to see.
The result? Customers get dragged into a ‘who blinks first’ cashflow game. Delivering a skip is money in for the operator. Collecting it is money out. So the longer that skip squats on a customer’s drive, the better the firm’s cashflow looks.
But for the customer, the hire only ends when the skip’s gone. Having a huge lump of steel blocking the drive for a week or more is exactly what fuels those angry one-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot. Once you’re known as slow to collect, your brand’s worth less than your cheapest 6-yarder.
So what’s the alternative? Don’t dodge the issue – make it your advantage.
- Show your prices upfront.
- Use your website and marketing to highlight the risks of the bargain-basement operators.
- Spell out the value you offer beyond the metal box itself.
And if you really want to stand out, go bold. Guarantee collection. For example: “We’ll collect within 48 hours of your call, or we’ll give you £50 back.”
That’s not weakness. That’s confidence. And confidence is what builds trust, wins work, and keeps customers coming back.
This blog is also available as a YouTube video
