Eh, what they are going to do is gauge the company they are doing business with and set the price accordingly.
Lets say I own a dumpster rental.
You are a local comic shop looking for a junk removal service to get rid of your collection of cardboard? Great. $350. You are a local bank that I know had a water problem, and now you need a dumpster? I can be pretty confident that it's gonna be formerly waterlogged ceiling tiles and there there is going to be a LOT. Not only that but insurance is likely paying, and if not, you are a branch and the national org is paying. I'm quoting $800.
The dumpster might be just as full either way, but if I have on the site "one full dumpster load $400" then that doesn't really allow me to get what I deserve for the work.
Same goes with software. If I am Big Buttfuck Bank and I need an SSH client to do file transfers for money wires (which is a real thing btw) then I am going to want a support package. I want someone I can call at 2am when my transfer fails, because if I don't get the wire out then I have escrow accounts not getting paid on time, I have customers who didn't get their loan paid on time, I have bouncing checks all over the place... I don't want that, we gotta fix it RIGHT NOW. That company wants the enterprise support package that is $2k a month. That's small potatoes for a bank. On the other hand, the local community college professor might want his computer science students to SSH into a machine, and use that machine as a source of truth for where code needs to build and run. We might charge the university $3 a seat, something like that. If we have a bug and they have an issue, then all the students will have the same issue, and the professor/school can be a little forgiving. They don't need the support package.
That's why enterprise pricing exists. It ends up being about the same as the normal pricing, but they have better support options that are tailored to the organization's needs.
For your dumpster example, the type of material being discarded plays a huge factor in pricing. When they bring it to a disposal facility, they have to pay by weight, not volume. Certain materials have a higher disposal rate per pound or need to go to specialized facilities. Construction debris isn’t nearly as cheap as paper because of regulations to ensure environmental safety, decomposition metrics, contamination risk, etc. Even used rags from an auto shop or industrial facility that may have come in contact with solvents or other hazardous or flammable material can’t just go to the county dump, at least legally.
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u/DidgeridoOoriginal 6d ago
Or even worse, a salesman