I am convinced that people do themselves more harm than good when they get several estimates. They start off wanting to compare quality but are quickly sidetracked and seduced into comparing price.
Economists have concluded over and over that it is imposssible for a company to deliver quality, good service, and the lowest price. Notice I said lowest not best price. There is a vast difference between best price and lowest price. The lowest price always sounds good. It's tempting--like the siren's song. However, just like that shipwrecker, the lowest price won't deliver a happy ending. In fact, we surveyed the more than 200 jobs we performed one year and discovered that, if the jobs had been done right the first time by the original remodeler, 58% of the homeowners would not have needed our services. In other words, they paid twice for the job. Many of them thought they were getting the best price. Sadly, they were just low-balled.
Getting back to the estimate issue, there are approximately 200 contractors in our local Yellow Pages. Countless others who do so-called "quality work" are not even listed there. You find them on flyers stapled to light poles and on cardboard signs stuck at intersection medians. The odds of getting three reputable contractors are extremely slim, and more importantly, the low-baller you do find just makes you distrust whichever reputable company you had the good fortune to find.
Let me share a story with you. This is perhaps the most extreme example from my years in remodeling, but it is nonetheless true. My church deacon referred a woman to me who had just returned from 37 years of missionary work. She'd retired and had inherited an old house that had structural damage. I gave her an estimate for $10,000 plus any plaster repairs that would be needed on the interior after our underpinning and jacking was done. She didn't give me an answer right then but agreed to give me one in two days. When I called her back, she was short with me and informed me that she had received another estimate for $100. (That's not a typo. Her second estimate beat mine by $9,900.) She was sure I had tried to rip her off.
"You certainly don't have to get me to do the work," I told her, "but please don't pay that other guy $100. All he could do for $100 is go under your house, smoke some cigarettes, come out a few hours later, and say he's done. Save your $100."
Luckily, her son was an engineer. I spent a great deal of time fighting for this woman's $100. Mind you, I wasn't even trying to get the job for myself. However, by explaining to her son step by step what needed to be done to make her home safe in order to explain how a $100 estimate was a most definately a scam, we got the job.
Alright, maybe you wouldn't have been fooled with such a large disparity between the estimates, but the same mentality the woman had tricks homeowners everyday into going with the $7500 rather than $9500 estimate. They're lulled into the poor decision by being smart shoppers even though the only thing they cut cost on was quality.
Rather than collect estimate after estimate for a remodeling job, go with someone you feel comfortable with, someone you can trust, someone who is reputable. Hopefully, you will find that to be us. We're never going to be the cheapest. If we are, I made a mistake. Talk to any of our past customers and they'll tell you that Your Construction Source is expensive but good, that we're expensive but always deliver exactly what they wanted.
As long as the customers keep calling us back, we won't change. If you want other estimates, have at them. As long as you have mine, though, you have the best.
