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The one line in my contract that stopped the lowball requests cold
I got tired of people asking me to match some random quote from a guy who works out of his van for $40 an hour. So I added a line that says all quotes are based on a written scope of work and any change to that scope triggers a new price. Last week a guy tried to talk me down from $150 to $100 and I just pointed to that line and said sorry, that's the rate. He actually hired me anyway. Has anyone else found a simple contract tweak that saved them from haggling?
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finleym373mo ago
Started doing that too after a client tried to add "oh and do the neighbor's driveway too" for free while I was standing in their mudroom lmao. Its wild how people think you can just change the whole job midstream without it costing more.
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mitchell.avery3mo ago
Contracts don't cover everything though. You can write all the legal jargon you want but a driveway is a driveway, not some wild new scope. The neighbor thing is a joke but realistically if you're already there with the equipment running, adding a few extra feet of driveway is like a 10 minute task. Customers see that and feel like you're nickel and diming them over something trivial. Maybe the issue isn't the customer being unreasonable, it's that you're pricing your base job too low then trying to recover on add-ons. Lots of people in trades just quote a flat "plus materials" rate and don't nickel and dime small stuff, keeps everyone happy.
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rowanw913mo ago
@finleym37 how do you handle it when they push back after you say "that'll be extra"? like do you pull out a phone and calculate it on the spot or just give a flat rate? i've had people get mad when i stop to figure out the math, but if i quote too low i eat the cost myself. always feels like a tightrope walk between keeping the job and not getting screwed over.
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anna7173mo ago
I get where you're coming from, but I actually see it differently-that neighbor's driveway thing sounds like a separate job, not a "change to the scope." A well-written contract should already say extra work costs extra without needing a special line for it.
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