Countless Tradies will give you a flat fee quote up front. I've never seen hvac or plumbing work done where the agreement was "here's my rate for time, and here's what I charge for each part I need to use." It has ALWAYS been, "I can do this for 5k" "I can do this for 20k" and so on.
I admit it is probably less like that as you go up the "quality" line, but flat fee is the standard I'm used to.
I'm a plumber and I try to do as much as possible on an hourly rate. It almost always saves the customer money and especially when there can be potential unforseen issues with a job. If someone insists on a quote I will obviously give one but I'm going to assess how long I think it's going to take me then put about another 30% or 40% on top incase the job turns into a 'mare. Usually it doesn't but it might.
If I do the work at hourly rates or day rates it almost always comes in less than what I would have quoted them up front. As for materials I can tell them a cost for that because I just add 10% to my trade price for them.
*I mainly undertake small domestic jobs as I'm a sole trader, no apprentice or plumber's mate. Bigger jobs, like whole house replumbing or new builds, yeah, people are often going to want a figure up front.
I did some sub-contractor work for a major name in the plumbing business, and that's closer to what I was basing my assessment on.
They very much do usually go in with a "I'll do it for 20k" but the parts are already accounted for, and they have a rough idea of what they are getting into.
We actually got involved in a lawsuit against them ... A drain in someone's basement had backed up, and they hired us to remove the liquid in the basement. It was sewage so we vacuumed it out and decanted it into a sewer right outside the house. The salesman had asked us how many gallons we removed ... It was posed as a curiosity question, not a pricing one. It was about 30,000 gallons we removed 3k at a time.
He charged that person about 90 cents a gallon for "disposal" and their customer brought footage of us just dumping in the sewer outside their house.
We didn't charge that plumbing company for disposal for that very reason ... But we do now after we found out how much they were trying to charge people. Even when we did jobs for them that required transportation, it's 60$ to dump 3k gallons clean mud, and free for us to dump sewage due to a contract with the city.
I love comments like this because they’re a reminder to never listen to anything on Reddit, no where else in the world can you find people stating things so confidently and be so fucking wrong it’s incredible
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u/XB1MNasti 5d ago
That doesn't make any sense... They make money off every and any part they buy.
The pricing is (cost)x2+50. And thats for every elbow, pipe, and glue they buy for a job.