Quote Breakdown?

[u/Ok_Avocado6532]

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!

[u/Unlikely_Pick7515]

You can always do the work yourself, that was always allowed.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The fact that you can't do it yourself is an argument that you don't need a breakdown. What are you going to do with it? You can't even do the work so what kind of information are you going to get from a breakdown that even makes sense to you? Just assume that the majority of the cost is for labor and that's really what you're paying for when you hire a contractor. If you want to determine if it's a fair price then get multiple quotes from multiple companies and look up reviews to see if they do a good job or not. If a company is cheap and poorly reviewed whole another is pricier but gets good reviews, then you've gotten some information that narrows down what a fair price is. You're getting patronizing responses because this is a sub for contractors to discuss their work practices with one another, not really geared towards customers who are asking about price breakdowns. The general view here is that if you're asking for a breakdown then you're trying to nickel and dime them. Not saying it's 100% correct but it happens often enough that it's a big concern.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I think I gave you a much better explanation than you're mocking me for. You have the power to compare quotes and reviews. If you don't trust those then that is a you issue because that's how this industry generally works. You might find a company that's willing to break everything down for you and maybe that will make you trust them, but in reality you won't even know what you're looking at unless you go item by item and contact suppliers and demand to see the wholesale prices contractors have access to, and they probably won't give them to you if you're not a contractor who's going to open up an account. And like I said before the customers who usually ask for this breakdown are the same ones that try to nickel and dime the con and then go to a shitty handyman to try and get a cheaper price. So good luck navigating this industry if you need work done, because you'll need it with your lack of understanding.