I remember something a while back,I,m one of those people who watches all kinds of documentaries,anyway this guy from trading standards was discussing the law and the difference between a quote and an estimate.Legally if you QUOTE say £100 for a job then the job costs more,unless you have discussed this with the customer AND issued a new quote that has been accepted by customer then you must take the hit,however if you only give an estimate then this is not legally binding and can be increased,or decreased at any time,however it is good practice to inform the customer immediately it becomes apparent that the cost will rise,and before any further work is carried out.
I had an experience of this some years ago,I'd heard that a warehouse needed some lights moving and they'd had a quote of around £30,000,I went down and asked if I could quote for the job and they said I could.Now the lights were in the aisles between racking and the racking was being replaced,the location of the new racking meant the lights would have been over the racks rather than in the aisles.The lights had 1/2 a metre of flex on them and were plugged into sockets on trunking,the other firm wanted to replace all the trunking with new and move it over by half a metre.I plannedto remove the flex on each fitting and replace it with a piece a metre long.I'd quoted £5000 for the job and got it,as I was leaving the office I heard 2 managers discussing my quote,they hadn't read it fully,merely the bottom line,on said "there's no way he can do it at that price,let's give it him and he'll have to do it at that price as he's given us a written quote".
A week later the job was done,everyone happy and I went in with my invoice,well almost everyone was happy,that particular manager was convinced I was going to take a major hit on the job.It had a happy ending though,they paid up no problem and gave me a load more work for being "honest" and not making a job bigger than it needed to be.
