The $99 junk removal myth in Colorado Springs

The short answer

A single low round figure in an advert is a lead magnet, not a quote. It exists to start a phone call. The thing that tells you whether a price is real is whether you can read the whole list before anyone comes to your house.

Ours is published. The minimum for a visit is $75. A sofa is $126. A queen mattress is $103. A standard refrigerator is $164. A washer is $133. A quarter truck load is $241 and a full truck is $732. You can check every one of those before you commit to anything, and the crew quotes from the same list.

Why vague pricing is worse here than in most cities

Because so many people in Colorado Springs are buying under a deadline they do not control.

A PCS household has a report date, a packing crew booked, and a final walkthrough scheduled. By the time the last three items need to go, there is no room left to shop around or to argue with a number that changed on arrival. The same is true after a hailstorm, when half a neighborhood in Briargate or Village Seven is trying to clear wrecked patio furniture in the same week.

Deadline buyers are the most exposed to pricing that only firms up once someone is standing in the driveway. That is exactly the situation a published list solves. If you can see the whole thing in advance, the deadline stops being leverage.

What a real price list looks like

A genuine list is long, specific, and boring. It distinguishes between things that are actually different jobs.

Notice that a standard sofa and an oversize one that has to come apart are different lines, and that a standard fridge and a French-door fridge are different lines. That specificity is the tell. A list that distinguishes between those has been built from real jobs. A single round number has not.

The three things a teaser number quietly leaves out

When a headline figure is very low, it is usually low because it excludes something. The three most common exclusions, and how we handle each:

• The carry. Some pricing assumes the item is already at the curb. In this city that is a serious assumption — walkout basements on sloping lots in Rockrimmon and Mountain Shadows, bonus rooms over garages in Wolf Ranch and Flying Horse, detached garages behind Old Colorado City houses. We include carry-out from any floor. No stair charge, no walk-up fee.
• The disposal. Whatever the receiving facility charges is inside our number, not added afterwards.
• The distance. Black Forest, Falcon, Monument, Palmer Lake and Fountain are long runs from the center of town, often down unpaved drives. Our published prices are the published prices out there too.

If something is genuinely not included, you should be able to find that out on a web page rather than in a driveway.

How the arithmetic actually works

Because the list is public, you can do the sums yourself before you call. A common Springs job — a queen mattress, its box spring and a sofa going out of a rental in Security-Widefield before a walkthrough — priced as a set plus the sofa is $143 + $126 = $269.

A hail-season patio clear: patio table, two patio chairs and the umbrella with its base is $89 + $30 + $30 + $53 = $202.

An appliance swap in Cimarron Hills where the old washer and dryer go together: $133 + $128 = $261.

Those are the real numbers, in advance, in writing. If the total gets high enough that volume pricing is cheaper, we tell you: the ladder runs $241 for a quarter, $338 for three-eighths, $431 for a half, $513 for five-eighths, $587 for three-quarters, $661 for seven-eighths, and $732 for a full truck, and we quote whichever of the two routes is lower.

The minimum, explained properly

Every hauler has a minimum, because every job costs a truck, fuel and a crew regardless of what is in it. Ours is $75 per visit. The honest way to present that is exactly this way — as a floor, stated plainly, rather than as a headline number that implies it is what a typical job costs.

In practice most single items price above it on their own. A twin mattress is $82. A recliner is $98. A microwave is $30, so a microwave alone reaches the minimum instead of its list price. Knowing that up front lets you make the sensible decision, which is usually to add the other three things you were going to deal with later and get a single visit's worth of value.

How to test any quote in about ninety seconds

Four questions. Any hauler in this city should be able to answer all four before they drive out.

• Can I see the full price list, in writing, now?
• Is the carry-out from inside the house included at that price, including stairs?
• Is disposal included, or added at the end?
• Is the quoted number final, or an estimate that firms up on arrival?

If the answers are yes, yes, yes and final, the number is real. Ours are published on the Colorado Springs price list, they include the carry and the disposal, and the quote you get in writing is the quote you pay. There is no same-day surcharge either, which matters in a city where so many people find out about a deadline four days before it lands.

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