My quotes won’t be free forever!

I love these posts I keep seeing "FREE NO OBLIGATION QUOTES". But yeah, it’s gonna cost £200,000. What am I getting for my £200,000? How do you know you’re not going get hit with extras half way through the job if you don’t know the full details and exactly what the contractor has priced for.

I've done one quote, and it didn't take me five minutes to do. The quote I did was to remove and replace a bath. Dave was not confident about removing the bath and replacing it, so I increased the labor cost to ensure we did it properly. My quote came in £500 cheaper than the first quote this customer received, and I stated that if we did the job quicker, we would not charge for all the time quoted. However, this quote allowed the customer to get a better price from someone else, as they knew what they were talking about.

Quote consisted of the following:

1. Full material breakdown with weblinks to where I was going to buy the materials from and how much they cost. Ideally, when the business is set up, I will have a trade account and be able to buy all of these materials in one place. Well, the customer would be able to buy the materials from one place for the job.

2. Any possible extras that have not been priced for, which could potentially happen due to possible damage that was job-specific. These extras had not been included in the price but would have been covered in the three days to complete all of them if they became a problem.

3. The sequence of works (SOW) or it could be a build program, depending on how large the job is.

4. Labour cost and working hours. Dave said this was over the top, but I believe it is fair. If someone quotes three days' work to do a job and is only there an hour a day, then it is not three days' work; it was half a day!

5. Drawing of how the finished product should look.

   
   

The link to my quote is below for anyone to see the full details and how this quote was set out in excel. I am proud of this quote, and it is how I intend to quote all of my jobs.

Replace Bath Quote, Materials, Possible Extras, SOW and Drawing - 13.05.25.xlsx

Download XLSX • 42KB

If I were to get this quote agreed upon, I would sit down with the customer remotely and discuss the quote. When they understood all elements, I would ask them to confirm via email that they had been shown the quote and were happy for me to proceed. The contract would be sent, and the customer would sign.

All these free, no-obligation quotes are great. My quotes won’t be free forever because the beautiful thing about my quotes is that even if I am slightly overpriced on labor, if you decide not to go with my price and get a few other quotes, the level of detail in my quote will make that builder think that you know what you’re talking about. I believe that half the battle in this industry is when a builder prices a job for someone, sometimes they look at that person and think, "you haven’t got a clue what I need to do," and then they rip you off or scare you into thinking you need more work done.

But not only do they rip them off on the original price, when they get halfway through the job, they may say, "I didn’t price for that," and then you’ve got to pay more money. If you have a fully detailed quote, which details exactly what you’re going to get for your money, then if someone says there’s an extra, it would be quite clear. Extras are genuine sometimes, but the way they are being issued to people at the moment, I believe, leaves people open to being almost billed thousands for extras. This happened to me; with all of my experience, we got hit with extras because we did not get a proper quote from the landscaper who did our garden.

I am offering free quotes at the moment. I would love to quote someone’s extension with big drawings. If you have an extension coming up and you’re waiting for prices to come back, I have no one that can do the work, so no ulterior motive to make a profit from the price I give you. I couldn’t do it if I wanted to because I’ve never done it before and I wouldn’t; I am not competent to manage someone's extension as I have never done it before. But it doesn’t mean I can’t price it accurately. I used to price all of the HSE notified refurbishment jobs I worked on 10 years ago. Wouldn’t you really like to know the cost of your job without the builder standing in your house telling you how much materials have gone up, how expensive they are? I believe this is a myth I would like to shatter. But I could be wrong.

Let’s use a different example: you want someone to put a new door in your home, but they fitted it with the handle on the left side, hanging a different way, and your light switch is now annoyingly behind a door. You expected it to be on the right-hand side, with the light switch being easy to access. If there was no drawing or detailed SOW agreed at the quote stage, how do you know who is right or wrong? Could it be an extra for them to rehang the door and make good or replace the frame where the hinges have been moved because you have apparently told them to do it, or does it become really simple if the drawing was agreed and the job has not been completed as specified?

My quotes won’t be free forever, but I’m doing them free for now. Please send me your jobs so we can be nosy together. I stress again I have no ulterior motive behind doing the quotes because I can’t do the work other than the honesty you’ll get from someone who knows what they’re talking about and doesn’t have any ambition to do it. The only payment from anyone I am helping ATM is for genuine Google Reviews LINK INCOMING.