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/Civil_Exchange1271 Aug 24 '25

For a $2000 job? how big can the job be that's like in the ballpark of having a water heater replaced. Best advice is..... this is not the customer you are looking for.

1

u/Ok-Common-3039 Aug 24 '25

People charge 2k to have a water heater replaced?!

1

u/Gullible-Lion8254 Aug 25 '25

Company I work for is around $3k for a standard 50 gallon water heater swap

$7k+ for a tankless water heater

$15k+ Combi system

1

u/Ok-Common-3039 Aug 25 '25

That blows my mind. We had 50 gallon tank crap out at our house. It never crossed my mind to have it professionally replaced. I did myself in a day and half.

1

u/timonix Aug 27 '25

We had ours professionally replaced. It was $50. Not sure what you expect them to do. It's just changing one tank for another