Should you charge for quotes and site visits?
You spend your Sunday driving to three quotes. One books. The other two were never going to — one was fishing for a number to beat down their current guy, one wanted a free design they'll hand to their cousin. That's a day's earnings gone, and it's why "should I charge for quotes?" comes up for every trade eventually.
The honest answer: most quotes should stay free, but some are really surveys — and you should charge for those. Here's how to tell the difference and how to charge without killing the job.
Why free quotes are usually right
Domestic customers expect a free quote, and for good reason — it's how they compare trades. For a straightforward job you can price in twenty minutes, a free quote is a cheap sales cost. Charge for that and you'll lose work to the fitter down the road who didn't.
Free makes sense when:
- The job is simple and quick to price — a suite swap, a leak, a rad change.
- It's local — no half-day round trip.
- Your win rate is high — you close most of what you quote, so the free ones pay for themselves.
When a "quote" is really a survey — and worth charging for
Some jobs need real work before you can price them: measuring up, drawing, speccing, specifying materials, solving a problem. That's not a quote, it's a paid service someone's trying to get for nothing.
Consider charging when:
- The visit needs a proper survey or measure-up — a full bathroom or kitchen design, a wet room feasibility, damp investigation.
- You're producing drawings, plans or a detailed spec the customer keeps.
- There's significant travel — an hour-plus each way turns a "free quote" into half a day.
- You can smell a tyre-kicker or price-fisher — they've had five quotes, want it itemised to the screw, and keep saying "just to compare."
- You're a specialist and the diagnosis is the value.
The tell: if the customer walks away from your visit with something useful whether or not they hire you — a design, a diagnosis, a spec — you gave them a product. Products cost money.
How to charge without losing the job
The trick is making the fee feel fair and low-risk. Three ways that work:
Make it deductible. "The survey is £75, and I take it off the job if you go ahead." Now it's not a cost, it's a deposit on your time. Most serious customers say yes; time-wasters vanish — which is the point.
Charge a call-out, not a quote fee. Framing matters. "There's no charge to quote, but a diagnostic visit is £60" reads very differently from "I charge to quote."
Only charge for the second layer. First conversation and rough ballpark free; the detailed design or full survey charged. You qualify for free, then charge once you know they're real.
Qualify before you quote — the cheaper fix
Half the "should I charge?" problem disappears if you filter before you drive out. A few questions on the phone weed out the maybes:
- What's the job, and where?
- What's the rough budget or timescale?
- Have they had other quotes? (Not fatal — but "six others" is a flag.)
- Are they the decision-maker?
You'll spot the price-fishers and the not-serious before you've spent the diesel. And the faster you respond to a genuine enquiry, the more likely it books — which is really a missed-call and follow-up problem as much as a pricing one.
Scripts you can use
Charging for a survey (deductible):
"Happy to come and take a proper look. For a full design and measure-up there's a £75 survey fee, and I knock that straight off the job if you decide to go ahead. Does that work?"
Charging a call-out for a diagnosis:
"No charge to quote a straightforward job. This one needs me to trace the fault first, so it's a £60 call-out — I'll tell you exactly what's wrong and what it'll cost to fix before I do any work."
Declining a tyre-kicker politely:
"Sounds like you're weighing up a few options — makes sense. I do charge for detailed surveys, so it might be worth getting your shortlist down first. Give me a shout when you're ready and I'll come take a look."
The bottom line
Keep the quick, local, likely jobs free — that's your sales cost and it's cheap. Charge for the visits that are really unpaid work: surveys, designs, diagnoses, long drives. Make the fee deductible and you'll lose nothing but the time-wasters.
Once you're in front of a real customer, what wins is a fast, clear, professional quote — so read how to write a quote that wins the job next.
QuoteSnap gets a professional quote out the same day, so the visits you do make convert — describe the job, add your labour, send a branded quote in about a minute. Try it free for 14 days.