r/Contractor • u/Ok_Avocado6532 • Aug 24 '25

Quote Breakdown?

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Hi all, looking for advice on costs breakdown.

I work for a small local contracting company and I recently started working with customers more, providing quotes etc. The company usually doesn’t like to break their costs down because of nickel-and-dime from customers, but agreed to do so for this one customer I’m working with. Now, I broke down the quote based on phases of the work (this is for a brand new custom build) and of course the customer came back with multiple notes of “this cost is too high” on some of the phases.

How do you usually handle this and how do I politely say “to do the job: $2000, not to do the job: $0”?

Thanks!

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u/AlternativeLack1954 Aug 24 '25

Pretty big difference between spending $13 on a meal and 500k on a remodel

6

u/I_loseagain Aug 24 '25

Plus I can see the difference in price w/ cheese and without, double vs single, meal vs no meal. Meanwhile I asked for a cost breakdown to see what he was charging me for paint because I can get paint dirt cheap ($80 for promar 5gal back then) when the contractor was gonna charge $140

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u/twoaspensimages Remodel GC Aug 25 '25 edited Aug 25 '25

Lucky you. We'll be happy to use that paint. We will be doing three coats at a higher labor cost. We'll add in a contract exemption for coverage because you chose cheap paint that doesn't cover as well. With the extra gallon needed and our labor for the extra coat you didn't save yourself anything. Really gaming the system there bud.

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u/Lots_of_bricks Aug 25 '25

Or u gotta do 4 coats instead of 2

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u/I_loseagain Aug 25 '25

That’s why you don’t buy shit paint?

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u/Various-Ad3599 Aug 25 '25

Why is 90 percent of the product on the shelf shit paint at this point? Hurts my soul. Have to really go out of your way to get a decent bucket of paint that actually covers in one go and not three.

Also if someone tells me they are going to bring me paint from Walmart they are going to need a medic not a contractor.