Enjoy our debut radio show, recorded from a customer’s driveway in Potomac, Maryland on Thursday, June 15, 2023! Here, we tell the story of 1-800-Junk-Refund and what we do for customers. Purchase our $79 radio show voucher (normally $229, good for a pickup truck of junk removal) from our RADIO SHOW page!
Listen live each Thursday at 3 PM EST on bbsradio.com! Enjoy!
https://bbsradio.com/podcast/junk-refund-show-june-15-2023
I love to haul away vintage arcade machines. They’re popular among collectors as long as they work.
More than that, I love to make money for our clients when we sell their good stuff and give them money back. That’s popular among everybody, as long as they work.
A nice lady in Great Falls, Virginia contacted us to haul away some of her stuff. Among that stuff was a vintage Popeye Nintendo arcade machine. She paid us $250 to haul away two pickup truck loads of stuff, using our Speedpass link on our website. The normal price for this amount of hauling is $350…
So on the first visit we hauled away some junk, including some carpet, a chair, and some miscellaneous stuff. We left the arcade machine to haul away on the next visit but we did take some photos of it so we could put it up for sale.
I checked online and found this same machine selling for about $400. One guy was asking $2,450, but no one went after it. So I listed her machine on Facebook Marketplace for $795 after plugging the machine in and verifying that it worked. Within 48 hours I had sold it for my asking price.
She got $280 back within 48 hours after only spending $250 on her junk removal job!
Whenever we sell something that we’re hauling away for a customer, they get 35 percent of the sales price as long as we sell it for more than $20. Our client’s share on this one sale was $280! She was thrilled to get the money plus we still have other items to sell!
Welcome to the next generation of junk removal–cash back when we sell your good stuff! (We must be eating our spinach…)
Cash refund for a tennis player? Sure!
Meet Richard, a pro tennis player who recently sold his home in the Kentlands, then moved to New England. He had us come and haul away 3 pieces of exercise equipment which we were happy to do. Accordingly, he paid us $150 for hauling them away.
We then took them to our store and sold all 3 for about $500. As a result, Richard got $250 back!
Ironically, we ended up hauling two of the items right back to the Kentlands area and placed them in the homes of other Kentlands residents!
Finally, Richard poses outside our retail store with his refund check. Congratulations, Richard! Game, set and match!
Richard pays $150, gets $250 cash refund back!
It’s amazing how fast some of these refunds happen, too! In this case we drove only about 5 miles to get to his home. Then, he showed us some exercise equipment he hadn’t used in a long time. He was moving to New England, and he didn’t want to haul the equipment along for the trip. Who could blame him?
So, we gave him a price to haul it off, which we believe was below what it would have cost him to go elsewhere. Accordingly, he went with our offer and had us haul away the stuff. We took it over to our store (we use storage units not instead…) and sold it within about a week.
Richard got a percentage of the sale, which was about 50 percent at the time. (We now give 35 percent!) After all was said and done, he made $100 more on the sale of the equipment than he paid to have it hauled away! That’s a cash refund from the sale of his junk!
Would you like to be next? We do free estimates too!
Meet my new friend! Maybe it was her Pittsburgh Steelers sweatshirt, or just the cool electric car she rides around in every day, but I liked Carol Portis at Leisure World the moment I saw her. She was kind enough to take over the responsibility to have her friend’s apartment cleaned out.
She heard about us and had us do the job. It’s the Carol Portis’ of the world that make having good friends so special.
One of the many things I enjoy about the work that I do is meeting the people I meet. We tend to get involved in their lives when something significant is happening, be it a job transfer, a move, a college student coming home to move in, a divorce, or whatever it may be.
People like Carol make it easier for others. She stepped in and made life easier for her friend, when in fact, life may not be that easy on a day-to-day basis for Carol.
I applaud her for the unselfish way she helped out her friend. As a result, the apartment got cleaned out and her friend’s life was made easier.
Way to go, Carol! You’re awesome!
Wilbur Performs With His New Guitar Outside Our Store
We picked up this guitar today on a junk removal job. Later, a guy named Wilbur pulled up to our store just as we were closing.
He saw us take this instrument off the truck and immediately asked about it. It is somewhat of a kid’s size instrument with a built-in speaker. So, we turned the it on, but the speaker wasn’t working.
Wilbur just kept playing. After a minute, it fired up and sounded great.
Wilbur bought it for $10 and immediately went into the parking lot and delivered a live concert. Congrats!
Sometimes it’s the simple things in life that bring the most enjoyment. It’s amazing what only $10 can buy these days. Even adults can find a great deal of enjoyment with a simple “toy.”
And it doesn’t matter if it’s new either. This purchase was a great one for Wilbur but he didn’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on it. Yet, the joy he got out of it was magical to see. We were thrilled for him and we were glad this wonderful instrument found a new home!
That’s the way to go through life! Enjoy the your new instrument!
By John Kelly – The Washington Post
A record collection gets sold for $12,000!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The junk hauler figured they had to be worth something, these 15,000 black discs that filled an entire room in a Silver Spring house.
“It’s by far the largest collection in the seven years I’ve been cleaning out people’s houses,” Alan Cook told me as three of his employees lugged box after box out to a truck parked on the cul-de-sac.
They were 78-rpm discs mostly, and mostly opera. Locked in their dusty grooves were the voices of long-dead singers, from American soprano Bessie Abott (singing “Où va la jeune Hindone”) to Italian tenor Alessandro Ziliani (singing “Donna Non Vidi Mai”).
Alan has a deal with the people who hire him: His company, 1-800 Junk Refund, sells everything of value and splits the proceeds 50-50. But old classical records clog thrift shops and library book sales everywhere. When Alan put an ad on Craigslist he got only a few nibbles.
Then a record dealer from Frederick came to visit. He offered $4,000, then upped it to $6,000. Alan wondered if the records might be worth even more. He accepted the $6,000 offer, but wrote an agreement that if he was offered more than $10,000, the man would lose the collection — but get $2,000.
And that’s when a dealer from Long Island called and asked Alan to describe the records. “Money’s not a problem,” the man said.
His interest piqued, the dealer flew down a few days later, inspected the collection and offered $12,000.
Alan called the $6,000 man. “We got a better offer,” he said, “but you just made 2,000 bucks.”
It would take Alan and his crew — Kennedy, Gilberto and Darryl (aka “Happy“) — another day to move all the records to a storage unit. Then there were the binders full of hand-lettered indexes to the collection, the opera books, the auction catalogues, the opera-related magazines and newspaper clippings.
“This guy loved opera,” said the junk hauler.
“That’s a good question,” said the Long Island record dealer, Larry Holdridge. “I don’t know. The singing. The music. Every voice is an individual instrument. It’s much more personal, I think, than listening to violinists or pianists, who in terms of style have individual qualities, but with singing, each voice is so different.”
This collection, Larry said, was not particularly stellar but he thought there may be some gems, a few choice recordings of the sort that get collectors excited.
And he should know: Larry sold many of them to the opera lover. “He was a customer for about 20 or 30 years, I’d say. Mostly Italian opera, rather than German or French. He wasn’t interested in collecting rare records, just things he liked to hear.”
* * *
“As kids we’d be out in the cul-de-sac riding our bikes and you could hear it, you could hear the opera, even though the windows were closed. You’d come to the house and you’d feel the walls shaking. It was just so loud. He just loved it. He would sit with either a glass of cognac or a glass of wine — he had special wine glasses, very, very thin — and he would drink his wine and listen to opera.”
That’s the man’s daughter. The last year hasn’t been easy on the family, and she asked that I not include their names.
“Sadly, he’s not well,” she said of her 83-year-old father. “He’s got Alzheimer’s.”
The man came to adore the music of Verdi, Puccini, Caruso through his father, who was an opera singer in Italy.
“I was a child of the ’70s and I couldn’t stand it,” the daughter said. “Quite honestly, to this day, I really hate opera. I was totally Beatles, Rolling Stones, all that classic rock. I remember playing for him the Who’s ‘Tommy,’ a rock opera, just trying to get him to say ‘Okay, I can see this.’ But no, never. We just had totally divergent taste in music.”
Her mother died four years ago, “although he keeps asking for her.” In the fall, she and her sisters helped him move to an assisted-living facility. It’s a good place, she said.
But what about his beloved records, I asked. How can he live without his opera?
“He has all his CDs,” she said. “Maybe 2,000.”
I hope he’s listening now, the cares of this world disappearing as the joys of the next one are painted in the air by a sublime voice.
A note from 1-800-Junk-Refund: We want to thank John Kelly from The Washington Post for writing this excellent article. We appreciated his efforts to come to the job site and report on what was happening.
The story of the attic dolls sold starts with Bob Hakes. Betty Ubbens gave us Bob as a referral. Betty works for Long and Foster in Arlington, Virginia. Bob’s wife had died a couple of years earlier and Bob needed to downsize.
He had us haul away a number of items, including some antiques, some furniture, a couple of Hummels, and finally an antique pump organ.
On the way out of the house, Bob said his wife had collected a number of dolls from around the world over the past 40 years. He said they were upstairs in the attic in a couple of boxes. Consequently, he suggested we take them and see what we could do with them on eBay.
 This French-made music-box doll found in an attic was sold for $442 to a buyer in Austria! It was made in the late 1800’s. Thank you Long and Foster for the referral! |
There were a couple of boxes upstairs with dolls in them. Also, a number of the dolls looked old, but one in particular caught our attention. We were grateful to Long and Foster for giving us this refferral!
It also looked old, but it was the legs, or the absence of them, that caught my attention. Instead of a couple of legs, there was an ivory-type shaft coming down from the doll’s torso. Was there a notch cut into the end of the shaft? I thought, “Flute doll!” So I tried blowing into the notch, but there was no sound.
Then I noticed as I held the doll that the head was wobbling a little bit. I thought I may have broken it, so I grabbed the head and twisted it gently to see if it was broken. It rotated freely. I thought that was weird. I was now quite sure I might have unintentionally broken the doll.
As I held it by the shaft, I accidentally wiggled it a little bit and I noticed the entire doll rotated around the ivory shaft freely. I started to shake it slightly to see if it rotated any more. It did. It rotated freely 360 degrees.
What happened next was magical.
A music box started to play. This was a music box doll, made in France in the late 1800’s. Thank you, Long and Foster!
We sold it on eBay for $442! In addition, we also sold a number of other items from his home too, totaling over $2,000! The real estate agent at Long and Foster was thrilled!
Bob had paid us $550 to haul away his stuff. We paid him $955 after we sold his junk!
Imagine getting a 174% return on your money! We also clean out your house! That’s the next generation of junk removal. And it all started with a referral from Long and Foster.
So in summary, that’s what we do!
Enjoy this article published in the Gazette Newspaper!
North Potomac junk removal business sells some items and splits profits with customers
Gazette Newspapers, Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007
by Bradford Pearson | Staff Writer
As Montgomery County grows increasingly congested with houses and businesses full of unwanted items, the junk hauling business has expanded to accommodate the increasing need to declutter. One North Potomac businessman, however, has found his niche in the burgeoning field.
His company, 1-800-Junk-Refund, is a hauling company with an entrepreneurial twist: If workers find valuable items while hauling away unwanted stuff, they sell it. 1-800-Junk-Refund helps people decide what should end up in the trash and what could end up in someone else’s living room, according to founder and owner Alan Cook.
‘‘The reason for the name is that you have to make a call on what to throw away and what to save,” he said. ‘‘A lot of times it’s all junk, but sometimes you’ve got value.”
While cleaning out a house, garage or business, Cook or one of his six employees inspects the items that the owner wants to discard. But some items set themselves apart, whether it is a couch in good condition, or a pipe organ in need of attention. Cook then takes the ‘‘sell-able” items to a storage unit and cleans or repairs them. Then he finds a way to sell them. The owners and 1-800-Junk-Refund split the profits 50-50.
The local market for junk hauling has increased in past years, with companies like 1-800-Got-Junk and Kensington-based College Hunks Hauling Junk opening area franchises. Increased competition, however, may be a good thing, some say.
Junk removal can be fun!
‘‘Competition is definitely abundant in the area,” said Omar Soliman, CEO of College Hunks Hauling Junk. ‘‘But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it breeds awareness of an industry that a lot of people never thought to use before.” With more junk-hauling companies, cornering a sector of the market is becoming more important.
‘‘It is encouraging that entrepreneurial people are able to create niche services in the junk removal space,” Mark Rubin, owner of a 1-800-Got Junk franchise in Montgomery County, said of 1-800-Junk-Refund in an e-mail.
‘‘The local junk removal market will continue to grow as people become more aware of the service.” Part of the reason for the growing competition, Cook believes, is the nature of the area.
‘‘Montgomery County and the area in general are, for the most part, very well-off,” Cook said. ‘‘The people around here just have more stuff.”
Cook started his company seven years ago after he was laid off from a sales job. He already had a hauling truck from a firewood business he previously owned, and thought that it might be a good idea to get into business for himself.
‘‘There’s no red tape when you work for yourself,” Cook said. ‘‘I get to work out of my house, plus I’m making more now than I did when I was a salesman.”
1-800-Junk-Refund and the original owners generally split the profits 50-50, but there are a few exceptions. During one job, a woman asked Cook if he would try to sell her father’s car. Cook, 49, saw the 2002 Chrysler Sebring convertible and decided to take a chance.
We sold the car for $10,500 to an attorney in Minneapolis when the best offer locally was only $9,800!
‘‘I’d never sold a car for someone else before, but I figured what the heck,” he said. The owner and Cook arranged a deal where any profit above $9,900 would be Cook’s. He walked away with nearly $1,000. Owners often ask Cook to do things above and beyond hauling.
‘‘People always ask you to do A, B, and C,” Cook said. ‘‘You just have to be willing to do D, E, and F for them as well.” In the past, D, E, and F have included mulching yards and driving items to New York and New Jersey.
As for how he chooses which items to sell, Cook has honed the skill over the past three years, usually looking for things in good condition that have a history of selling, like couches and other furniture.
In three years, Cook has sold nearly 200 items for the company, ranging from a copy of the Beatles’ ‘‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album to a set of paper scrolls signed by presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and William Howard Taft. The uncertainty of each project, according to Cook, helps keep things exciting.
We got his autograph!
‘‘Sometimes people call us and say they have a whole house full of stuff,” Cook said. ‘‘It’s a fascinating part of our business not knowing what we might find.” While Cook would not release sales numbers, he said that roughly 80 percent of the business’ profits come from hauling, with the other 20 percent from sales.
Over the past two years, Cook said, business has grown exponentially. The company averages three to four jobs per day, with more in the spring and fewer in the winter. Cook said that every month so far this year has seen at least a 40 percent increase from last year.
While, like any business, Cook wants to make a profit, customer stories are often just as valuable. A Michigan man once drove through the night to pick up a pipe organ Cook had sold him. The organ, the man said, was for his bride-to-be. He was an antiques fanatic, and he was hoping to restore the item with his new wife’s help.
‘‘It always feels good to sell something and be part of something special,” Cook said. ‘‘Whenever there is a story behind the sale it makes it that much better.”