How to price bin cleaning

Real prices from bin cleaning companies

Two of our clients publish their prices. Both price per bin.

For comparison, a larger competitor in the same LA market charges about $79 per bin one-time and $39 per bin quarterly. There's a wide range, and the low end is crowded.

How to structure your plans

• Price per bin. Most homes have two or three carts (trash, recycling, green waste). Per-bin pricing scales with the work.
• Offer monthly, quarterly and one-time. Monthly is your best customer. One-time is your trial. Price one-time high enough that monthly looks like the deal.
• Collect payment at sign-up. "Pay before you spray" means no chasing invoices.
• Put prices on your website. Price searches converted at 20% in our ad data when they landed on a page with prices.

Check your margins first

Before you pick a number, work out what one stop costs you: drive time between stops, time at the curb, water, chemicals, fuel, equipment wear and payment fees. Then look at what a full route day earns. If a full day doesn't pay you well after costs, the price is too low, and more marketing just means more unpaid work.

Dense routes change the math. Ten customers on one street cost far less to serve than ten spread across a county. That's why we aim ads and door hangers at the neighborhoods you already serve.

Contracts and minimum terms

Fresh Bins LA added a 12-month term to monthly and quarterly plans because people were signing up monthly and cancelling in month two. Their early-cancel charge is the one-time rate minus the plan rate for each completed cleaning, capped at $75 per bin, for new sign-ups only. It's spelled out on the pricing page, in the FAQ, in the terms and in the welcome email.

Zafra went the other way: no contracts, as a selling point. Both can work. Pick one, say it plainly, and put it in the plan name.

How to raise prices without losing customers

• Grandfather current members. Keep existing customers at their rate and charge new customers the new price.
• Know when your software locks the price. Jobatory sets the price when someone enters their address. Anyone who started checkout before your change can still pay the old price, and editing a booking later re-prices it at the new rate.
• Change it on your website, ads and Google profile the same day, so nobody sees two prices.

Turn one-time customers into monthly ones

One-time cleanings are how most people try you. The money is in getting them onto a plan. Fresh Bins LA sends an automatic text and email 75 days after a one-time cleaning, right when the smell is coming back, inviting them to book again.