Most homeowners only see $$
Most homeowners only see $$
In my experience most homeowners don't know a great job from a mediocre one. IE, almost everything goes behind the wall, or in the attic. Thus they base cost on a small cross section of pricing that among others, we provide. The we being the key word as many doing electrical work don't have the skill set to determine their overhead, or even know if they're making a profit which hurts everyone.
I just had a older (I'm 59) couple ask me to quote a price for a job to replace a couple of 2 tube 4' fluorescent fixtures with recessed fixtures in their Kitchen. They mentioned that they wanted LED lights. I tried to educated them that to replace or equal the illumination from the fluorescents I'd need to install 16 of the 75 watt equivalent 576 lumen LED fixtures. That not being feasible I instead tried to convince them that six 42 watt CFL recessed six inch fixtures would provide more light (than the fluorescent fixtures they were to replace) and with new 6500K bulbs be quite nice.
Result someone took down the fluorescent fixtures and installed four 576 lumen LED recessed 6" fixtures.
So we suffer by having competition that are after the same thing we are, to survive and hopefully make a profit. Trouble is we don't have a way to educate our competition so that the playing field is more level.