Free Estimate
A free estimate is a quote visit you don’t charge for, because winning the job pays you back for the time. It stops being free once the visit stops being a sales call — a long drive, a paid diagnosis, or a caller who never plans to hire anyone.
What it means
Quoting for free is normal, not a favor. If you win a fair share of the jobs you quote, the visits that don’t convert are covered by the ones that do — the same way a shop doesn’t charge for letting you browse. That math only holds while the visit is genuinely a sales call.
It breaks down in three cases: the drive is long enough that a lost job costs you real money, the client actually wants a diagnosis rather than a quote, or the caller is collecting several free visits with no intention of hiring anyone. None of those is really "asking for a quote" — charge a call-out fee for the first and third, and price the second as its own paid visit.
You quote a fence repair for free, a five-minute look that costs you fifteen minutes of driving. You win most jobs like it, so the free visits pay for themselves. A caller forty minutes away, asking for the same free look, is a different trade-off — a call-out fee protects the trip either way.
Treating every request to "come take a look" as the same free visit, without asking whether the caller wants a price or a diagnosis — then eating the cost of an hour spent finding a fault nobody agreed to pay for.
See also
Where this shows up
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- guide How to price a job so the number holds up The quote only works if the number underneath it does. Start with the price, then write it up.
- tool Free Quote & Estimate Generator Fill in your business and client details, add line items — mark anything optional — set a deposit, and watch a clean quote build itself. Turn it into an invoice with one click.
- tool Quote & invoice terms builder Tick the clauses that fit the job, fill in your numbers once, and get a plain-English terms block you can copy, print, or send straight into the quote generator.