Playbook, plumbing and heating firm
The number they want is on the other side of a survey
A repair is priced from a rate card and an installation is not priced at all until somebody has stood in the airing cupboard. That is the split, and most of the awkwardness in this conversation comes from a caller who has met the rate card and reasonably assumes the same method produces a figure for a new boiler. It does not, and explaining why in two sentences is worth more than any range.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for quotes and estimates holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A rate card sells time and an installation quote sells an outcome, so the risk of whatever is behind the cupboard door moves onto the firm the moment a fixed price is given. That is the reason the survey exists and the reason it is not a sales visit.
- What the survey settles cannot be photographed: where the flue can terminate and how far that is from a window, whether the gas pipe running from the meter is large enough for the appliance being proposed, whether the existing cylinder stays or goes, and what the floor under a bathroom is doing.
- A bathroom is several kinds of work priced together, the strip out, the first fix, the tiling and the making good, plus a skip and a week when the room is unusable, so the figure arrives a day or two after the visit rather than at the end of it.
- The caller is holding two or three written quotes and the differences between them are almost entirely in what has been left out, so naming the exclusions plainly does more for a firm than shading the price.
How it arrives
- how much to swap a combi for a combi
- do you charge for a quote
- can you price a bathroom from photos
- is that a fixed price or a day rate
- how long after the survey do i get the quote
- does the price include taking the old boiler away
What has to be indexed for this to work
| From prices with the survey named beside them | A starting figure for each kind of installation you take on, and in the same paragraph the sentence saying what the survey settles that the starting figure cannot. Separated onto different pages, the number gets retrieved without the caveat and becomes the price the customer heard. |
|---|---|
| What the survey actually looks at | The flue route and terminal position, the gas supply from the meter, the condensate run, the existing cylinder and controls, the state of the pipework and the access to get an appliance in. Publishing the list is what makes a survey sound like engineering rather than a foot in the door. |
| What a fixed price includes, and what it does not | Removal and disposal of the old appliance, making good, the system flush, the controls, the certificate, and whatever you charge for separately. Quotes are compared on the exclusions, so the exclusions are the part worth indexing. |
| Where you work to a day rate instead | The jobs you will not fix price at all, usually anything opening up a floor or chasing an old leak, and how the day rate runs. A customer who understands why one job is fixed and another is not stops asking you to fix price the second one. |
The reply
Repairs are priced from the rate card, but a boiler replacement is not, because the figure depends on things nobody can see from here. Our installation page carries a from price, and next to it the list of what the survey settles: where the flue can go, whether the gas supply from the meter is big enough, whether the cylinder stays, and what state the pipework is in [1]. The survey costs nothing and the written quote follows it. I cannot price a job from a description, so if you leave your name, a number and your postcode the office will arrange for somebody to come and look.
It draws the line between the two pricing methods in the first sentence, because the caller does not know there are two. The survey list is given as engineering rather than as an excuse, which is what makes the refusal to quote read as competence. It ends with the one thing the assistant can actually do, which is put a name in front of a person.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor gives the make and model, describes the layout or sends photographs and asks what it would come to, or asks for a ballpark on an installation.
I cannot put a figure on an installation, and a number given before the survey is one you would quite reasonably hold us to. Leave me your name, a number and your postcode and somebody will come and look and put it in writing.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never give a figure for an installation, even hedged as a rough idea, because a hedged number is remembered as a quote and argued about at the invoice.
- Never say the final price will land at or near the from price, since the from price exists precisely for the simplest version of the job.
- Never say a photograph is enough to price from, because the flue termination and the gas supply are not in the photograph.
- Never suggest what appliance size or model somebody needs, as that is sizing work done at the property and it drives the whole quote.
Questions
- Can it quote at all if we upload our price list?
- It can read out a from price and it can list what the survey covers. It cannot combine an appliance, a flue run and an hour count into a total, and it should not, because the moment it produces a figure you are negotiating down from it.
- Does saying the survey is free actually help?
- It is the most asked question on installation enquiries and most heating sites bury it. Answering it in the same breath as the from price removes the reason people fill in a form and then never reply to the callback.
- What about people who only want a ballpark?
- Give them the from price and the exclusions and be plain that the real figure comes from the visit. The ones who wanted a number to compare against another firm now have one. The ones who wanted a commitment were never going to get it from a chat window.
Keep reading
- Everything for a plumbing and heating firmSorting an emergency from a routine job, quoting call out rates, and never suggesting a fix on gas work that only a registered engineer may touch.
- Handling quotes and estimates in generalWhat has to be known before a number is possible, how the scoping step works, and how to answer without stonewalling or inventing a figure.
- Two different questions arrive under the same wordWhether a firm is registered and insured is published. Whether a home emergency policy pays for this repair is a question for the insurer.
- Some of these dates cannot simply slide a fortnightA landlord record with an expiry, a service tied to a warranty anniversary and a part ordered for one day all resist being moved.
- The leak is back and it is now an accusationWhether the fault came back, a new one started or the work was wrong is a judgement for an engineer standing in the room.
Try it on your own material
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