The Stairlift Enquiry Study 2026: what 567 US mobility dealer websites show a cash-paying buyer
On 15 September 2026 we read the public websites of 596 US mobility and home medical equipment dealers across the 25 largest metros; 567 were readable. 157 publish a price a buyer can read, and 41 print a price beside a main product. Of 372 readable forms, 330 ask nothing about the buyer and none asks all four buying questions. 12 let a buyer pick a time online. Nothing was called and no form was submitted.
Crawled 15 September 2026 · Last updated 15 September 2026 · Method version 1.0 · 765 sites crawled, 169 screened out as not mobility dealers, 596 on the list, 567 readable, 29 unreachable, 25 metros
This is the first public measurement we know of that reads what a cash-paying buyer meets on the websites of US mobility and durable medical equipment dealers, metro by metro, on a stated date, with a method anyone can repeat. It is not a survey and nobody was contacted. Every count below comes from pages that were loaded the way a shopper's browser loads them.
The buyer we had in mind is not a Medicare claimant. She is the adult daughter with a credit card and a father who has stopped using the upstairs. She is not filing anything. She wants to know what a stairlift costs, how soon someone can come and measure, and whether a person will answer at eight in the evening when she finally has time to look.
Everything below is a count. No dealer is named for failing, here or anywhere else we publish. Sites that could not be read are reported as unreachable, never as failures, and a signal that could not be judged is reported as unknown, never as a fail.
What did we find?
The ten signals, side by side. Each bar is the whole list of 596 dealers; the grey part is what could not be judged from public pages and is never counted against a dealer.
The Stairlift Enquiry Study, 596 US mobility and DME dealers in the 25 largest metros, crawled 15 September 2026. Our data
What does a daughter shopping for her father actually find?
Put the ten signals back together into one evening and this is the shape of it. The numbers in the paragraphs below are the same counts as the chart above.
She searches on her phone after dinner. She opens six dealer sites in six tabs. On four of them there is no price of any kind, because 410 of 567 readable sites publish no price a buyer can read, and 305 of those do not even say to ring and ask. Two tabs say some version of request a quote.
She goes looking for a number. On four or five of the six it is tappable, because 425 of 567 sites have a real tel: link. On the rest the number is text she has to copy out, or an image, or a script that never drew it on her phone.
It is 8:40pm. On three of the six the site tells her when anyone is there, and on one of those three it also says somebody takes contact outside those hours: 126 of 567 do both, and 214 of 567 state no hours at all and say nothing about after hours. 66 sites have a chat widget, which is the only thing on the page that looks awake.
So she fills in a form. It asks her name, her email, her phone and a message box. The median dealer form has five fields. It does not ask who the lift is for, which product she is looking at, when she needs it, or whether the staircase turns. 330 of the 372 forms we could read ask none of those.
She presses send and she has no idea what happens next. Two of the six offered her a free in-home assessment and on neither could she pick a time: 213 dealers invite an assessment and 176 of them give no way to book it. Then she waits for a call back, some time tomorrow, during the working day she spends at her own job.
Nothing in that evening is exotic. Every one of those failures is on the public page, and every one of them is fixable in an afternoon.
What are the four questions that qualify a mobility buyer?
These four, asked before anyone gets in a van, separate a cash-paying family from a Medicare enquiry, a price shopper and a repair call. They are also the four that decide whether a home visit is worth the fuel.
- Who is it for? The buyer is very often not the user. A daughter buying for a father needs different language, a different decision timeline and usually a different payment method than a user buying for themselves.
- Which product? A straight stairlift, a curved stairlift, a lift chair, a scooter, a ramp and a vertical platform lift are five different price bands and three different install crews. The answer sets the quote before the call.
- When do you need it? A discharge date next Tuesday and a plan for the spring are the same enquiry on a form and completely different jobs in a calendar.
- What are the stairs, or the home layout? Straight or curved, how many steps, indoor or outdoor, is there a landing. This is the single field that decides whether a stairlift quote is a number or a guess.
| What the form asked | Forms | Share of readable forms |
|---|---|---|
| None of the four | 330 | 89% |
| One of the four | 37 | 10% |
| Two of the four | 5 | 1% |
| Three of the four | 0 | 0% |
| All four | 0 | 0% |
372 forms readable in the page source, of 567 readable sites. 195 sites had no form we could read at all; 3 of those load the form from a third-party host, so the fields are not in the page source and the signal is unknown rather than a fail.
Counted question by question, across the same 372 forms:
| Question | Forms that ask it |
|---|---|
| Which product | 28 |
| When do you need it | 11 |
| Who is it for | 5 |
| Stairs or home layout | 3 |
A form can ask more than one. The most common dealer form is a name, an email, a phone number and a free-text box; the median form has five fields.
How many dealers publish a price?
The engine reads the home page, up to two product pages, a pricing page and a financing page where the site links them, and looks for a money figure between $250 and $60,000 that is not a discount, a monthly payment or a finance term. A figure printed on the same line as a product name is the strongest evidence and is counted separately.
| What a buyer can find out about price | Dealers | Share of readable |
|---|---|---|
| A price printed beside a main product | 41 | 7% |
| A price somewhere on the site a buyer can read | 157 | 28% |
| A price range published (for example "$3,000 to $6,000") | 43 | 8% |
| A "starting at" or "as low as" figure | 76 | 13% |
| No price, but the site says to call or request a quote | 105 | 19% |
| No price and no invitation to ask for one | 305 | 54% |
567 readable sites. The first two rows overlap on purpose: a site printing a price beside a product also counts as publishing a price. The last two rows are the 410 sites that fail the signal, split by whether they say anything about price at all.
Half the market shows a buyer nothing. Not a figure, not a range, not a sentence telling her to ring for one. On a purchase that in this category is usually four figures, from a person who is not claiming it back from anyone, the page simply stops.
Do dealers offer financing, and do they say so?
138 of 567 readable sites, 24%, mention financing, a payment plan or a named lender anywhere on the pages we read. What they name:
| What the site says about paying over time | Dealers |
|---|---|
| Financing available, financing options, we offer financing | 81 |
| A payment plan, monthly payments or instalments | 72 |
| CareCredit | 32 |
| Acima, Katapult or lease to own | 16 |
| 0% APR, no interest if paid, deferred interest | 13 |
| Shop Pay or PayPal instalments | 12 |
| Klarna | 11 |
| Affirm | 4 |
| Synchrony | 4 |
| Wells Fargo Health Advantage | 1 |
A site can name more than one. Counted on the home, product, pricing, financing and contact pages read for each dealer.
Read that beside the pricing table. Three quarters of dealers will not tell a buyer the price, and three quarters will not tell her she could pay for it monthly. The two silences compound: a four-figure number with no payment plan beside it is the number that ends the evening.
Can a buyer book a time, or only leave a name?
213 of 567 sites, 38%, invite a free in-home assessment, evaluation, consultation or survey. It is the single most common call to action in this market. 176 of those 213 give no way to pick a time.
| How the visit gets arranged | Dealers | Share of readable |
|---|---|---|
| A real booking tool in the page source | 12 | 2% |
| An assessment offered, with a date field or a booking page but no tool | 25 | 4% |
| An assessment offered and no way at all to pick a time | 176 | 31% |
| A plain contact form and nothing else | 232 | 41% |
| No form and no booking tool in the page source, so not judged | 122 | 22% |
567 readable sites. The twelve booking tools seen in the page source were Calendly (5), Jobber (3), Housecall Pro (2), a GoHighLevel calendar (1) and Square Appointments (1). Every one of the 37 dealers that passed this signal also offers a home assessment.
This is the cheapest gap on the whole page to close. A free consultation that cannot be scheduled is a promise the buyer has to chase, and she is chasing it during the hours she is at work.
Is anyone reachable outside business hours?
Mobility is bought at night. The family conversation happens after dinner, after the fall, after the hospital call. What the sites say about that, as a claim on the page and not as a test of anybody's phone line:
| What the site says about when it is open | Dealers | Share of readable |
|---|---|---|
| States hours and says someone is reachable outside them | 126 | 22% |
| States hours and says nothing about outside them | 166 | 29% |
| Claims after-hours or emergency cover but never states its hours | 61 | 11% |
| States no hours and says nothing about after hours | 214 | 38% |
| Has a chat widget of any kind | 66 | 12% |
These are claims printed on the page. Nothing was called, at 9pm or any other hour, so this study cannot say who actually answers.
Does the copy lead with Medicare or with the purchase?
For this signal the navigation, header and footer are stripped out of the home page first, so a "Shop" item in the menu does not count as a buying word. What is left is the copy. The engine then records which comes first: a Medicare, Medicaid, insurance, prescription or prior-authorisation word, or a price, buying or scheduling word.
| What the home page copy reaches first | Dealers | Share of readable |
|---|---|---|
| Never mentions Medicare, Medicaid or insurance at all | 417 | 74% |
| Mentions it, but reaches a price or scheduling word first | 98 | 17% |
| Reaches Medicare, Medicaid or insurance before any buying word | 52 | 9% |
Of the 150 sites that mention it at all, the first such word reached was "insurance" on 90, "Medicare" on 32, "prescription" on 14, "Medicaid" on 5, "VA benefits" on 3, and "in-network", "deductible" or "Medi-Cal" on the rest. 48 of the 417 in the first row have too little visible home page copy to contain a buying word either; they are recorded as unknown on this signal and never as a fail.
This one cuts against the obvious story. Most mobility dealers already lead with the purchase rather than the paperwork. The problem is not that the copy is Medicare-first; it is that a cash-pay page with no price, no payment plan, no time she can pick and no question about her father is not really selling to her either.
What does Medicare actually cover for these products?
Half this market's copy is organised around a question the cash-paying buyer is not asking, and the other half avoids the subject so completely that a buyer who does have a claim cannot tell what to do. Both are easier to fix once the published rules are on one page. Here is what the government's own pages say.
| Product | What the published pages say | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Stair lift | There is no coverage page for stair lifts on medicare.gov (the URL /coverage/stair-lifts returned HTTP 404 when we fetched it), and the list of Medicare-covered durable medical equipment on the DME coverage page does not name them. That page defines DME as equipment that is "Durable (can withstand repeated use)", "Used for a medical reason", "Typically only useful to someone who is sick or injured", "Used in your home" and "Expected to last at least 3 years". A stair lift is fixed to the staircase, which is why it reads as a home modification rather than equipment. | medicare.gov, DME coverage |
| Lift chair | Medicare treats the seat lift mechanism and the recliner as two different things. The CMS local coverage determination for seat lift mechanisms (L33801, revision effective 2 July 2023) covers the mechanism only when all of these are true: the person has "severe arthritis of the hip or knee" or "a severe neuromuscular disease"; the mechanism is "part of the treating practitioner's course of treatment"; the person is "completely incapable of standing up from a regular armchair or any chair in their home"; and "Once standing, the beneficiary must have the ability to ambulate." A standard written order has to reach the supplier before a claim is submitted. The furniture around the mechanism is not the covered item. | CMS, LCD L33801 |
| Mobility scooter, power wheelchair | Covered under Part B as DME, but "only when they're medically necessary". The page states: "You must have a face-to-face examination and a written prescription from a treating provider before Medicare covers a power wheelchair or scooter", and certain power wheelchairs need prior authorisation, which the supplier requests. | medicare.gov, Wheelchairs & scooters |
| Wheelchair ramp, walk-in tub, grab bars | Not named in the covered DME list on medicare.gov, and there is no coverage page for them. They are home modifications rather than equipment used for a medical reason. | medicare.gov, DME coverage |
| Hospital bed, walker, commode chair | Named directly in the covered DME list on the medicare.gov DME coverage page. | medicare.gov, DME coverage |
Fetched from medicare.gov and cms.gov on 15 September 2026; the full URLs are in the Sources section below. Primary
What it costs the person even when it is covered, from the medicare.gov costs page for 2026: the Part B premium is $202.90 each month, the Part B deductible is $283 a year, and after the deductible the person pays 20% of the Medicare-approved amount for durable medical equipment. So a covered item is not a free item, and an uncovered item, which is what a stair lift, a ramp and the chair around a seat lift mechanism are, is paid for in full by the family.
That is the whole commercial argument for publishing a price. The buyer in this category is nearly always spending her own money. She knows it. The page that tells her the number is the page she rings.
How many dealers have a page in Spanish?
17 of 567, or 3%. A further 15 have a translation widget in the page source and nothing written. 532 have neither. For comparison, Medicare itself publishes the same durable medical equipment coverage page in Spanish at es.medicare.gov, which we fetched on the same day.
How many dealers buy shared leads?
12 of 567 readable sites carry a national lead-network reference in the page source: Angi on 5, HomeAdvisor on 3, a Nextdoor Neighborhood Fave badge on 2, Houzz on 2, Thumbtack on 1 and BuildZoom on 1. This is a proxy and the evidence line says so: a dealer can buy shared leads without putting a badge on the site, and a badge can be a review link rather than a lead contract. Taken with the ads table, 161 of 567 sites carry a Google Ads tag, a Meta Pixel, a Microsoft UET tag, a Local Services badge or a call-tracking script, and 176 run Google Tag Manager, which can load any of those out of sight.
How many of the ten signals did each dealer pass?
567 readable dealers. The median dealer passed 4 of 10. Nobody passed 9 or 10. Our data
61 of 567 dealers, the top 11%, passed 6 or more. Eleven passed 7 or more. Two passed 8, the highest score anywhere on the list, and no site passed 9 or 10. The ceiling is not artificial: every one of the ten signals was passed by somebody, and the Spanish page and the qualifying form are simply the two almost nobody has.
Which dealers scored highest?
These eleven passed 7 or more of the ten signals on 15 September 2026. They are named because they passed. Nobody is named for failing.
| Dealer | Metro | Signals passed | What they got right |
|---|---|---|---|
| Access Elevator, Inc. of Roselle | Chicago, IL | 8 of 10 | a published price, financing, booking or an assessment, hours and after-hours, tap to call |
| Keystone Accessibility | Washington, DC | 8 of 10 | a published price, financing, booking or an assessment, hours and after-hours, tap to call |
| ACG Medical Supply - Rowlett Showroom | Dallas, TX | 7 of 10 | a published price, financing, hours and after-hours, tap to call, cash-pay first |
| Altamira Ltd. NJ | New York, NY | 7 of 10 | a published price, financing, a qualifying form, tap to call, cash-pay first |
| American Quality Health Products | Philadelphia, PA | 7 of 10 | a published price, financing, hours and after-hours, tap to call, cash-pay first |
| Divine Medical Supplies LLC | Atlanta, GA | 7 of 10 | a published price, financing, hours and after-hours, tap to call, cash-pay first |
| Easwe Mobility LLC | Philadelphia, PA | 7 of 10 | a published price, financing, hours and after-hours, tap to call, cash-pay first |
| Harmony Home Medical Supply San Diego | San Diego, CA | 7 of 10 | a published price, financing, hours and after-hours, tap to call, cash-pay first |
| Mobility Transportation Systems | Tampa, FL | 7 of 10 | a published price, financing, booking or an assessment, tap to call, cash-pay first |
| Scooter King Orlando | Orlando, FL | 7 of 10 | a published price, financing, hours and after-hours, tap to call, cash-pay first |
| Signature Elevators & Accessible Design | Washington, DC | 7 of 10 | financing, booking or an assessment, hours and after-hours, tap to call, cash-pay first |
Ranked by signals passed, then alphabetically. Links go to the dealer's own site. We have no relationship with any dealer on this list and nobody paid to appear on it.
Which metros were covered?
The 25 largest US metropolitan areas. Readable dealers per metro: Los Angeles 60, New York 53, Miami 43, Washington DC 33, Dallas 31, Houston 30, Philadelphia 29, Chicago 23, Detroit 23, Atlanta 21, San Francisco 21, Phoenix 20, Charlotte 19, Orlando 19, Baltimore 18, Denver 18, Tampa 17, Boston 16, Seattle 16, San Diego 12, San Antonio 11, Riverside 10, St. Louis 10, Minneapolis 7, Portland 7. The per-metro counts are in data.csv.
Which sites could we not read, and which were screened out?
765 sites were crawled. 169 were screened out because their own pages name no mobility or home medical equipment product: the public map searches for "mobility scooter dealer" also return moped shops, powersports dealers, electric kick-scooter retailers and auto-service branches. Those are a different business and would have flattered every number here, because an online scooter shop publishes prices and takes card payments by definition. They are excluded from every count on this page and reported separately.
| Why a site is not in the counts | Sites |
|---|---|
| Screened out: the pages read name no mobility or DME product | 107 |
| Screened out: reads as an electric kick-scooter or e-bike retailer | 44 |
| Screened out: reads as a moped or motorcycle dealer | 35 |
| Screened out: reads as a powersports dealer | 29 |
| Screened out: reads as a car or auto-service business | 14 |
| Unreachable: the home page would not load | 29 |
A screened-out site can match more than one category, so the screening rows total more than 169. The 29 unreachable sites are counted as unreachable, never as failures, and are left out of every share on this page.
The 29 that would not load: 16 returned a bot wall, 4 returned HTTP 403, 2 returned HTTP 404, 2 timed out, 2 failed DNS, 1 returned HTTP 503, 1 failed on TLS and 1 served an empty shell.
How was this measured?
- Source list. 765 dealer websites across the 25 largest US metros, built from a public directory list and from public map searches for "stairlift installer", "mobility scooter dealer", "lift chair store", "home medical equipment store", "wheelchair ramp installer" and "power wheelchair dealer" in each metro, deduplicated by domain. 169 were screened out as above, leaving 596 dealers on the list and 567 readable.
- How they were read. Plain GET requests with a browser user agent, a twelve second timeout, ten sites at a time and one request at a time per site with a pause between requests to the same site. At most seven pages per dealer: the home page, up to two product pages, a pricing page, a financing page, a contact page, a Spanish page where one is linked, and an embedded form document where the form is hosted elsewhere.
- What was not done. No call, at any hour. No form submitted. No message sent. No account created. No login, no private group, no paid data, no live map query. Nobody at any dealer heard from us, which is checkable from the method.
- Scoring. Each of the ten signals is pass, fail or unknown, with the evidence line, the URL and the date. Unknown is never a fail. The score is the number of passes out of ten. One signal is inverted on purpose: a national shared-lead network badge in the page source is the fail, because it indicates leads several dealers receive at once.
- What it does not do. It does not test a phone line, so it cannot say who answers. It does not test a form, so it cannot say what a reply looks like or how fast it comes. It reads at most seven pages, so a price on the eighth page is a miss. It cannot see anything drawn by script after the page loads, which is why a form loaded from a third-party host is unknown rather than a fail. And it measures a page, not a business: a dealer with a bad page can still be an excellent dealer.
- Names. Dealers are named only when they pass. Everything else is a count.
- Reproducibility. Every check on this page can be repeated from the outside with a browser and view-source. The engine is one Python file with no dependencies beyond the standard library, and it caches every page it reads so a re-run produces the same numbers from the same crawl.
Download the data. data.csv holds every count on this page: the ten signals, the pricing, financing, form, hours, positioning, booking and lead-network breakdowns, the score distribution and the readable dealers per metro. Aggregate only; the only dealer names anywhere in it are the ones that passed.
Cite as: The Stairlift Enquiry Study 2026, 596 US mobility and home medical equipment dealers in the 25 largest metros, crawled 15 September 2026, Wealth Marketing AI, https://wealthmarketing.ai/research/stairlift-enquiry-study
How do I get my dealership's result?
Every dealer on the list has a ten-line scorecard in this dataset, with the evidence line, the URL and the date beside each line. We do not publish it. If you want yours, pick a time here or reply to the email that brought you to this page, and we will send it before any call, whether or not we ever speak. If you would rather not wait, the four questions and the ten signals are all on this page: open your own site on a phone tonight and score it yourself.
Your dealership's ten signals, dated, before any call.
Book a time and we will send your scorecard first. Public pages only. Nothing called, nothing submitted.
Pick a time Or reply to the email that brought you here.Frequently asked questions
How many US mobility dealers publish a price online?
157 of 567 readable dealer sites, or 28%, publish a price a buyer can read somewhere on the pages we read, and 41 of 567, or 7%, print a price beside one of the main products. 105 more say some version of call for pricing or request a quote and give no figure. 305 show neither a price nor an invitation to ask for one. Crawled 15 September 2026 across the 25 largest US metros.
What are the four questions that qualify a mobility buyer?
Who is it for, which product, when do you need it, and what are the stairs or the home layout. Those four sort a cash-paying daughter buying for her father from a Medicare enquiry, a price shopper and a repair call, and they tell the dealer whether a home visit is worth booking. Of 372 dealer forms we could read on 15 September 2026, 330 asked none of the four and none asked all four.
Does Medicare pay for a stair lift?
Medicare.gov has no coverage page for stair lifts and the list of covered durable medical equipment on medicare.gov does not include them. The DME definition on that page is equipment that is durable, used for a medical reason, typically only useful to someone who is sick or injured, used in your home and expected to last at least 3 years. A stair lift is attached to the house, so it reads as a home modification rather than equipment. This is a description of what medicare.gov publishes, not reimbursement advice.
Does Medicare pay for a lift chair?
Medicare treats the seat lift mechanism and the recliner as different things. The CMS local coverage determination for seat lift mechanisms, L33801, covers the mechanism only when the person has severe arthritis of the hip or knee or a severe neuromuscular disease, it is prescribed as part of a course of treatment, the person is completely incapable of standing up from any chair in their home, and can walk once standing. The furniture around the mechanism is a separate purchase. This describes a published policy document and is not reimbursement advice.
Did you call the dealers or submit their forms?
No. Every site was read with ordinary GET requests and a browser user agent, one page at a time, with a twelve second timeout and a pause between requests to the same site. No number was dialled, no form was submitted, no message was sent, no account was created and nothing behind a login was touched. At most seven pages per dealer were read.
How many dealers let a buyer pick a time online?
12 of 567, or 2%, had a real booking tool in the page source on 15 September 2026. 213 invited a free home assessment or in-home evaluation, and 176 of those gave no way to pick a time: the buyer leaves a name and waits for a call back.
Which mobility dealers scored highest?
Eleven dealers passed 7 or more of the ten signals on 15 September 2026. Access Elevator, Inc. of Roselle in Chicago and Keystone Accessibility in Washington DC passed 8, the highest score anywhere on the list. No dealer passed 9 or 10. We name dealers only for passing; nobody is named for failing, here or anywhere else we publish.
How many dealers buy shared leads?
12 of 567 readable sites carried a national lead-network reference in the page source, most often Angi, HomeAdvisor or Thumbtack. That is a proxy for buying leads several dealers receive at once, not proof: a dealer can buy shared leads without putting a badge on the site, and a badge can be a review link rather than a lead contract.
Sources
- Ours Wealth Marketing AI, The Stairlift Enquiry Study 2026, crawled 15 September 2026. 765 sites crawled, 169 screened out, 596 dealers on the list, 567 readable, 25 metros, public pages only. Data: data.csv
- Primary Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (medicare.gov), 2026. Durable medical equipment (DME) coverage: the DME definition and the list of covered items. medicare.gov/coverage/durable-medical-equipment-dme-coverage, fetched 15 September 2026
- Primary Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (medicare.gov), 2026. Wheelchairs & scooters: medically necessary only, face-to-face examination and written prescription required, prior authorisation for certain power wheelchairs. medicare.gov/coverage/wheelchairs-scooters, fetched 15 September 2026
- Primary Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (medicare.gov), 2026. Costs: 2026 Part B premium $202.90 a month, Part B deductible $283, 20% coinsurance for durable medical equipment after the deductible. medicare.gov/basics/costs/medicare-costs, fetched 15 September 2026
- Primary Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Local Coverage Determination L33801, Seat Lift Mechanisms, original effective date 1 October 2015, revision effective 2 July 2023. The coverage criteria quoted for seat lift mechanisms. cms.gov, Medicare Coverage Database, LCD L33801, fetched 15 September 2026
- Primary Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (es.medicare.gov), 2026. The same durable medical equipment coverage page in Spanish, cited only as evidence that the Spanish page exists. es.medicare.gov/coverage/durable-medical-equipment-dme-coverage, fetched 15 September 2026
Cash-pay demand for mobility and DME dealers · Mobility dealer lead generation, 2026 · The 9pm Test, the method behind this kind of study · The 9pm Test, Los Angeles