Do you charge the customer a fee, or do you give free estimates?

[zappy]

I worked for a electrical contractor, and he's been in business for 30+ years. He told me, you never tell them you charge a fee to come out and give them a estimate. He also said he would get 70%-80% of the estimates he gave for free. People love the word free. You can include it in the estimate, just let them think it's free. Of course it's free if they don't chose you.

 

[Buck Parrish]

I some times charge an estimate fee if they don't own the house. Such as if they are looking in to buying it.

If the job is for a small repair. I will charge by the hour.

 

[readydave8]

I try to charge enough for my time working that I don't feel like I have to charge for estimates. There have been situations when I felt like what the customer was calling an estimate was more a design, and have a few times offered to design a small project for a fee, I don't remember anyone taking me up on it. I have gotten a little rude at times when I felt like the customer was looking for 15 bids on a $250 job, but plan to handle it a little differently in the future, make it be to their advantage to hire me although there may be someone willing to do it cheaper, or make it to their advantage to go away and leave me alone.

I want to work with my customer, be a part of his team or be his go-to guy. If I can tell someone over the phone to press a reset on a GFCI, it doesn't cost me much, and may gain me more future work. Simliar is free estimates.

I'm not very good at business and am trying to improve, just sorta muddled through the last 30 years.

 

[Joethecrow]

Readydave8, sounds to me like you're pretty good at "business" I like the way you think.

 

[Ken9876]

I've learned not to give out too much info., nothing better than laying out the job for someone else.

 

[jmellc]

Reminds me of a customer a former boss had. My boss wrote up quotes itemizing materials, labor, etc. We got a few jobs from the guy but I began seeing jobs done when I went to quote others. Customer was using quote for a material list and doing it himself, figuring out as he went along where to put everything. I started writing quotes simply as "wire, conduit, hardware, etc." Wrote details on my copy. Didn't get many calls from him after that. Guess he found another sucker.

 

[Ohmy]

We charge for estimates and rebate it if they do the work.

Sometimes we don't charge if we are having a really slow day. Everytime we start giving free estimates we swear that we will never do it again. Its hard to turn down calls when we've slow but its even more depressing to run bad calls.