# telling a customer you under charged



## CarrPainting (Jun 29, 2010)

for me if theres like wallpaper, its impossible to know whats under it, so I make a bullet point stating that my bid is based on what I can see prior to removing said wallpaper.

Otherwise I stick to my price..


----------



## pcplumber (Oct 12, 2008)

There is no such thing as being fair if there is no cheating. When is the last time a customer showed you they had a heart and they wanted to know if you was earning a profit so they could seriously give you some extra money. 

I do jobs from less than $100 to more than $50,000 and I throw in free things like faucets, a water heater, $1000 or more worth of work and people don't even offer a glass of water nor a thank you.

Being honest is good. There is no such thing as being fair. 

The strange thing about doing business is every time I have a soft heart and give a discount I screw myself. That will always be the job and customer where I have some type of trouble. It comes under Murphy's Law.

I can't remember any time I lost money due to bidding the wrong price. There were many times I made much less than expected and I never complained to my customers.


----------



## builditguy (Nov 10, 2013)

On a small project, if I come in way under the quoted price, I do knock a little of the bill. I still do really good and the customer is happy. 

In the end, no good deed goes unpunished. Has always seemed to come back to bite me. I still do it though.


----------



## pcplumber (Oct 12, 2008)

It is funny how people think. Before I give one penny away I think about my wife and my children, first. I really don't believe that any customer thinks that giving back money is a good deed and all the customer thinks is that you made so much money they are entitled to getting it back. I would rather give the money to my wife or children who really appreciate the gesture.

Giving back money reminds me of when my wife and I used to gamble about 25 or 30 years ago. Blowing $10k to $30k on a 3-day Las Vegas trip didn't seem to bother us much. I blew about $300k in Vegas over a 5 to 7 year period. The strange thing about money is I thought nothing about my losses, but when my wife wanted a new couch for our living room, or some other item, we would shop around for several weeks until we got our $5,000 living room set for the cheapest price we could possibly get. On my way home from Las Vegas I used to always think about how many of the best living room sets I could have purchased with the money we lost.

When customers agree to the price then they are obviously comfortable with it.

Family comes first!


----------



## CarrPainting (Jun 29, 2010)

pcplumber said:


> There is no such thing as being fair if there is no cheating. When is the last time a customer showed you they had a heart and they wanted to know if you was earning a profit so they could seriously give you some extra money.
> 
> I do jobs from less than $100 to more than $50,000 and I throw in free things like faucets, a water heater, $1000 or more worth of work and people don't even offer a glass of water nor a thank you.
> 
> ...


One of my first jobs I did, the HO didnt think I charged enough and doubled my contract amount.

Then told me, 'As a business owner, your no longer an employee'


----------



## Roofcheck (Dec 27, 2011)

Keeyter said:


> I haven't seen it mentioned yet so here is my two cents.
> 
> *Estimate= Guesstimate thats it bro.* =
> 
> ...


Fixed it.


----------



## pcplumber (Oct 12, 2008)

CarrPainting said:


> One of my first jobs I did, the HO didnt think I charged enough and doubled my contract amount.
> 
> Then told me, 'As a business owner, your no longer an employee'


45 years ago, a friend of mine (I never really had a friend) started his business the exact same time as I started mine. Lacking experience with pricing, my friend sold a job to relocate a water heater for $450 including labor and he asked me to help him. He also asked me to front him the cash for the materials. The materials cost $470 and the two of us worked an entire day. When the job was finished I asked the customer if she would pay the additional $20 for the materials and she refused to pay even though we showed her the receipts and we did not get one penny for the labor.

That never happened again!


----------



## jlsconstruction (Apr 26, 2011)

A couple times when I thought I was going to run into problems and didn't, I just did a couple other things that weren't in the original scope.


----------



## TaylorMadeAB (Nov 11, 2014)

CarrPainting said:


> One of my first jobs I did, the HO didnt think I charged enough and doubled my contract amount.
> 
> 
> 
> Then told me, 'As a business owner, your no longer an employee'



That is a once in a lifetime thing. He probably was self employed as well?
I hope that one day I have the ability/opportunity to guide someone like that. It obviously stuck with you.


----------



## Roofcheck (Dec 27, 2011)

jlsconstruction said:


> A couple times when I thought I was going to run into problems and didn't, I just did a couple other things that weren't in the original scope.


That's a little less than honest isn't it?


----------



## jlsconstruction (Apr 26, 2011)

Roofcheck said:


> That's a little less than honest isn't it?



How do you figure?


----------



## jlsconstruction (Apr 26, 2011)

They agreed to do pay me to do something for a price, if it is easier than I thought they still agreed on that price. So if I give them an up grade because of it, how is that not honest.


----------



## overanalyze (Dec 28, 2010)

...


----------



## TNTRenovate (Aug 19, 2010)

pcplumber said:


> There is no such thing as being fair if there is no cheating. When is the last time a customer showed you they had a heart and they wanted to know if you was earning a profit so they could seriously give you some extra money.
> 
> I do jobs from less than $100 to more than $50,000 and I throw in free things like faucets, a water heater, $1000 or more worth of work and people don't even offer a glass of water nor a thank you.
> 
> ...


I've had it happen in several jobs. They saw what we did and asked if they owed more than the balance due.

I also don't agree that there is no such thing as being fair. Fair simply means that both parties agree on terms and those terms are delivered and compensated for. That's fair.


----------



## avenge (Sep 25, 2008)

I would feel like an ass an idiot and a moron if I asked for more money because I underbid a job on a firm price. With that said very few of my jobs are set with firm price quotes. Many times I'll mention some part of the project required more work than I anticipated. Even though I'm not losing money my customer will give extra money with final payment. They always tell me they don't want me to lose money they never expect anything at a discount.


----------



## rselectric1 (Sep 20, 2009)

jlsconstruction said:


> They agreed to do pay me to do something for a price, if it is easier than I thought they still agreed on that price. So if I give them an up grade because of it, how is that not honest.


I'm confused with the reaction you got too.

When I have a customer that is easy to deal with, makes decisions quickly, is nice, and most importantly doesn't pull the "WHILE YOU ARE HERE CAN YOU DO ME A FAVOR CRAP" I almost always notice a few things that they need and offer to do them free of charge and feel great to do it for them.

Is that dishonest too Roofcheck?


----------



## FrankSmith (Feb 21, 2013)

I have told one customer that mid bid was low. I had told them a time and material job would be between 4K and 5K. It came in at 5.25K. I didn't want to send an invoice for the max with no explanation. I simple said "The job went a little over what I said. I will honer my price, I just wanted you to know why it was for the full 5k." He said thanks and we have worked together many times since.


----------



## BamBamm5144 (Jul 12, 2008)

jlsconstruction said:


> They agreed to do pay me to do something for a price, if it is easier than I thought they still agreed on that price. So if I give them an up grade because of it, how is that not honest.


Roofcheck may have read it like how I did at first. Sounded like if a job goes good, you do extra work to charge more so you can make more while there.


----------



## rselectric1 (Sep 20, 2009)

BamBamm5144 said:


> Roofcheck may have read it like how I did at first. Sounded like if a job goes good, you do extra work to charge more so you can make more while there.


Yeah probably. It's all about the frame of mind where you start to read the post. I didn't take it that way at all and had to read it several times to see where you got that idea and finally I saw it. No, just like me, he said he threw in some freebies when the job was trouble free and had nice clients.


----------



## Roofcheck (Dec 27, 2011)

jlsconstruction said:


> They agreed to do pay me to do something for a price, if it is easier than I thought they still agreed on that price. So if I give them an up grade because of it, how is that not honest.


My bad I did read it wrong.


----------

