Avoid the Pitfalls – Understand The Difference Between An Estimate and a Written Quote

Avoid the Pitfalls – Understand The Difference Between An Estimate and a Written Quote

There are really only 3 things you need to know:

No1: An estimate is exactly that: it’s a rough guide to what you can expect to pay. What you’ll end up paying can be very different. A written quote is a fixed price – it’s exactly what you’ll pay.

No2: With an estimate, if the work takes longer than the kitchen company expected, you pay more than the estimate. If it takes less time than they expected, you’ll probably not pay less than the estimate.

No3: Companies that give estimates have good reason to quote on the low side. It helps them get the job and, if they estimate too low, you pay the difference.

At My Beautiful Kitchen, we give out written quotations. We think it’s fairer for the customers.

However, it can go horribly wrong (for us). Let me tell you a story I call…

The Shawlands Renovation

(Aside: did you know that “The Shawshank Redemption” was written by horror writer Stephen King? Quite appropriate given the horror story I’m about to tell you.)

We recently fitted a kitchen for Paul and Tracy Gallagher in Shawlands, Glasgow.

Three freaky – and unforeseeable – things happened on this job which, if we used estimates rather than written quotes, would have cost the customers a lot of money…

Freaky thing No1: The customer asked us to open up a small recess in the corner of the room that had been blocked. The previous owner had told them that absolutely nothing was behind the wall except empty space.

Nevertheless, when I was quoting for the job, I still did my checks and I put a hole in the wall and shone a torch in to check. Everything looked fine and I quoted accordingly.

However, when the job started and we opened up the wall, in the far left hand corner there were hidden pipes and cables!

It turns out these were the mains water pipes coming into the building, several gas pipes and a few electrical cables.

Agghhhh! A couple of days work for us, but no charge to the customer!

Freaky thing No2: we’d been asked install ceramic tiles to the floor throughout the kitchen and dining room. When we lifted up the old vinyl covering, we discovered the floor was running off the level significantly. It had been packed up just about everywhere with underlay, wood and anything you could imagine to camouflage this. There were swollen joists, rotted floorboards and a few other surprises that meant we spent the weekend repairing the floor.

Come Sunday, problem fixed and no additional costs to the customer.

Freaky thing No3: Finally the freakiest bit. On the last day we were putting the last coat of oil on the hardwood worktops. The job is looking fantastic, the tools are packed away and we’re running through our final checks before the sign off… when we heard a strange sound like running water.

We check the pipes, nothing. Check the dishwasher and washing machine, again nothing. What’s going on? Then we open the window and the sssshhhhhing gets much louder.

We look out of the window and it turns out that the waste pipe running out of the building has a crack in it… right where it meets the lead down pipe. No problem if you were on the ground but we were 4 stories up.

It wasn’t anybody’s fault and a complete co-incidence that this problem presented itself at the exact moment we were working in the kitchen. It would have been very easy for us to say its nothing to do with us, but my thinking was the customer has spent a lot of money on their kitchen and I didn’t have the heart to say, “Here is your new kitchen, what do you think? It looks lovely doesn’t it, by the way you can’t use the sink or you might soak the people walking by in the street”.

What to do? What to do? I got on the phone and make some calls. It turned out even window cleaners don’t have ladders that high.

I try to hire them from a tool hire shop and it turns out they only hire ladders out to about 15m. We need about 20m.

I was running out of ideas when I spotted a Sky Tv Van with the biggest set of ladders I have ever seen. I asked them for some help and they obliged. We all held the ladder and John my fitter climbed the ladder and made the necessary repairs. I give the Sky guys a bung and it was happy days all around.

Although we could have asked for extra payment for fixing a problem that had nothing to do with do us, I believe in honouring our quotes, so all the customer paid was the exact price in our original written quotation.

If we’d been using estimates, the final cost to them would have been thousands of pounds more.

Quotes Are Good, But Detailed Quotes Are Better

As I hope I’ve shown, the benefit of a written quote is that you get a fixed price and you’re insured against unexpected extra costs.

If the quote is detailed, you get an extra benefit: it helps you understand what you’re getting for your money and see whether it’s good deal it is.

It will give an accurate breakdown of the job specification, the exact final cost, the model numbers of your appliances and specify exactly what work is getting carried out in your home right down to removing the rubbish at the end of the job.

With kitchens, there are so many factors that decide the end price for the job. If it’s a cheap price then a written itemised quote will help to highlight why its so cheap – it’s probably because either half the work is not been quoted for, the appliances are unbranded or not guaranteed, or the kitchen is flat pack and made from 15m cabinets.

Many kitchen companies don’t like putting quotes in writing as they know you will be able to check what they are giving you. So they’ll either try to pull one over on you by not giving you a written quote or, if pushed, they’ll give you a piece of paper with a price and a vague description of “supply and installation of kitchen”

There’s no reason for you to put up with this. A kitchen is a considerable investment and a key part of your life. You should always insist on getting good value for your money.

Do your research on the company and ALWAYS ask for a written detailed quotation, if the company refuses or tries to fob you off, it’s a red flag. Take your money and walk away.

Best of luck

Tommy