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March price analysis reveals month by month stability

  • Rate of price fluctuations minimal  

March 2019 data - The Price Monitoring Group actively monitors 26 service providers from across the country. This comprises 19 individual companies with some operating in more than one area. 

Similar to previous analysis, the pricing landscape for the collection of residential household waste is complex. No single or uniform price arrangement across all of the service providers has emerged, although there continues to be one dominant pricing plan in particular; Service Charge including a Weight Allowance Plus Per KG Charge for Excess Above Allowance. 

Complex Pricing Packages

A significant proportion of waste collection companies offer multiple waste collection packages to their customers. As a result of this, users have a choice of waste collection packages to choose from which adds to the total number of packages that are actively monitored. 

The total number of waste collection packages is 51, this is unchanged from the previous month (a full breakdown of all service offers is included with this report). 

During the March mystery calling campaign, there was no change in the total number of price packages compared to the previous month which stands at 8. Examples of price packages include: Service charge plus per kg weight charge; E-tag and other options (the full list of all pricing models is incorporated with this report under the data analysis). 

Where prices did change

Across the 51 price plans, the price variations are as follows: 

  1. Service Provider K– Service charge decreased from €26.67 to €25.00. (Service charge (including weight allowance) plus per KG charge for excess weight above allowance).
  2. Service Provider M– Ceased offering a secondary pricing option within the Service Charge plus per KG Weight Charge category. 
  3. Service Provider P – Decreased lift charges for all bin types: general waste decreased from €12 to €11.20, recycling bins from €4 to €3.80 and organic bins from €6 to €5.70 per lift. In reality, it has simply reversed all of the exact same increases it announced the previous month. (Service charge plus charge per lift per bin). 

Communication of price data

Generally, the provision of price information when waste collection company staff were contacted by phone was satisfactory. 

Why information is anonymised

The purpose of the Price Monitoring Group is to establish and track whether the prices householders pay for the collection of household waste fluctuates and if so, by how much. It does this by using a mystery-shopping approach to a proportion of licensed waste collection firms. However, since price monitoring is not carried out on a whole-of-market basis, it is not in a position to publish names of those firms that are actively monitored.  

Composition of the PMG

The group comprises representatives from:

-       Waste Policy & Resource Efficiency Division

-       An economist from the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment,

-       A statistician from the Central Statistics Office.

-       Shelfwatch – an independent price monitoring group and

-       Frank Conway, (MoneyWhizz) – independent consumer expert. 

To date, the Price Monitoring Group has met on twenty separate occasions: 13th September, 11th October, 14th November, 12th December, 9th January 2018, 13th February, 13th of March, 10th April, 14th, May, 20th June, 17th July, August 14th, September 11th , October 16th, November 14th, December 11th 2018, January 15th 2019, February 12th, March 14th and April 9th. 

Submissions to: pricemonitoringgroup@dccae.gov.ie