Asked by tradesman to pay £30 for a quote?

yrhengastan62

Charging for a quote is simply incorrect. This cost should be included in the overall costs of running that company. When I was employed we would sometimes take a week to study intensive documents in order to prepare a quote. We'd typically win 20% of offers. The costs we incurred would be part of the overall costs of running the business and not added to the individual offer.

You are talking about commercial contracts and tender conditions which commonly state tenders are to be submitted at the tenderers own expense. What is clear that there has to the acceptance of the condition before the visit for it to be charged . Plumbing and heating enginners, and washing machine repairs etc often have a call out fee which they charge for coming to cost work, irrespective of whether you want to accept the quite or estimate . Some tradesmen also put ' free quotes' in the leaflets. The question is whether the customer agreed to pay.

Thank you for all your points of view and advice. I think I will find someone else and say before they come that I don’t expect to pay for them to come out and quote/estimate.

Creepily, he left his Philips screwdriver behind.

Re the "call-out" fee = it's my understanding (from my own experience) that if a tradesperson charges a call-out fee that equals they are going to do the job there and then and both parties expect that to happen. I think the last time I had that was when my outside drain was blocked and I called out a general plumber for it and, as I recall, it was a small call-out fee (£50 I think??) and, when he took a look at it, it was a small/quick job to remedy and done within half an hour flat and that call-out fee included the cost of him actually doing the job - unless it had turned out to be a long complicated job. The purpose of that callout fee seemed to be that he thought it probably would be a quick/easy job he could do on the spot - but he'd left "leeway" to charge more in case it turned out to be a long complicated job.

I didn’t pay he the £30, I’ve never come across charging for a quote.

A bit of a chancer so after reading all your posts, won’t be using him.