Free Estimates, How do you do it?

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baccart

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I am seeing a pattern of customers bringing in their equipment because I provide free estimates!

Once I tell them what is wrong, If it is something they can purchase themselves, they do, or shop around till they find the cheapest price and I am out of My time.

How do you provide free estimates. Do you tell the customer exactly what parts/stuff is bad? Or do you provide a price only?

e.g

Customer Brings in a laptop that will not power on, specifies that he needs an estimate first. He is using a universal laptop charger. At this point, it could be the laptop charger, or the power jack, or the motherboard.

Simplest thing to do would be to try another adapter, which I do not have. But if it turns out to be the charger, and I tell him, he will most likely get it himself.
 
I don't do any free diagnostics. I always tell clients, I charge a minimum charge depending on the nature of the complaint, and apply that to the repair, should they choose to let me repair. If not, they pay the minimum.

Always charge 1/2 hour, or an hour, and apply towards repair.

This weeded out all the cheapskates. Saved me lots of time and frustration.


Now, if it is an Estimate, like, How much would you charge to install a new 500gig hard drive, then that would be free to estimate. Never a free diagnostic.
 
Last edited:
baccart said:
I am seeing a pattern of customers bringing in their equipment because I provide free estimates!

Once I tell them what is wrong, If it is something they can purchase themselves, they do, or shop around till they find the cheapest price and I am out of My time.

How do you provide free estimates. Do you tell the customer exactly what parts/stuff is bad? Or do you provide a price only?

e.g

Customer Brings in a laptop that will not power on, specifies that he needs an estimate first. He is using a universal laptop charger. At this point, it could be the laptop charger, or the power jack, or the motherboard.

Simplest thing to do would be to try another adapter, which I do not have. But if it turns out to be the charger, and I tell him, he will most likely get it himself.
Click to expand...

I don't offer free estimates. Diagnostics take time and if the customer decides not to have the work done for whatever reason they pay a diagnostic charge. If they do have the work done then diagnostics are included in the price. I did offer free diags when I first set up but found people did exactly as they are doing to you so I soon scrapped it. ;)
 
You have to be clear about offering free estimates, or free diagnostics. If you're providing free diagnostics, than people going elsewhere is something you're going to have to live with. If you're not, then just give them the price of what you think it will cost to fix it, don't tell them what needs to be done. If they push, tell them that you have to complete the diagnostics on it first before you can speculate.

On that note, do people charge for estimates? Seems a bit weird (probably illegal in some areas) to say Give me $20 and I'll tell you how much I think It will cost.

For your specific situation, it takes 10 seconds to hook up a multimeter to determine if it's the power adapter. At that point, you can sell them a universal, which you'll have to have in stock for any chance of making the sale, or say you can order it and it will cost $$.
 
I don't either but then I dont have a shop so my estimates cost me a lot of time and fuel so cannot afford to give them for free.

I guess you could not to instant ones but ask them to leave kit for estimates. Then diagnose and give them a price to fix it. Firstly some people will be too lazy to come and get it to then have to shop around for the fix. Secondly on the phone you can be vague about the exact nature of the repair and focus on the cost like "It's related to the power side of things. It will be £100 + parts" and not be drawn on the exact nature of the repair unless they agree to go ahead. You can say that estimates are free but diagnostic info costs. Obviously that would need to be handled well to avoid antagonising people.

I would imaging you'd need to accept that some people will do this but they are being paid for by the increased business the "free estimate" offer brings in. If it ISN'T paying for itself then clearly it's not worth doing.
 
"Free diagnostics" is really just a gimmick to get people in the door. People like "free" and once you have them in front of you it's then up to you to make the sale.

You can try and leave a little uncertainty in your diagnosis saying it will require further testing to be sure but at this point you believe it's going to be _____ which will cost $____ in labor and $_____ in parts.

If you are having more than a small percentage of people walk away from you once you have them in your store you need to practice up on your salesmanship. Either that or you just have good foot traffic by your shop and you are getting a few tire kickers, and you should change it from free diagnosis to a small fee,which is applied to repairs if they choose to go through with it.

If you shy away from people practice in a mirror and ask a friend to help you out once you think you have it down. You don't have to be Mr. Suave but be confident, professional and convince them that you are trust worthy. Some people have a natural talent for it, some have to work at it.
 
I charge £30 for a diagnostic and it's waivered if they go ahead with the repair or another service. So if it needs say a motherboard and they don't want to go down that road then it's £30 but if they want a data recovery instead then I waiver it.
 
ATTech said:
You have to be clear about offering free estimates, or free diagnostics. If you're providing free diagnostics, than people going elsewhere is something you're going to have to live with. If you're not, then just give them the price of what you think it will cost to fix it, don't tell them what needs to be done. If they push, tell them that you have to complete the diagnostics on it first before you can speculate.

On that note, do people charge for estimates? Seems a bit weird (probably illegal in some areas) to say Give me $20 and I'll tell you how much I think It will cost.

For your specific situation, it takes 10 seconds to hook up a multimeter to determine if it's the power adapter. At that point, you can sell them a universal, which you'll have to have in stock for any chance of making the sale, or say you can order it and it will cost $$.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with you, there are differences between estimates and diagnostics.
 
The way I do my diagnostics is: I state very clearly that I do diagnosis for $40 if the computer can be repaired and the customer chooses to have me do the repair then the diagnosis is free and I only charge for the cost of the repair.
 
I'm sure this is probably just my linguistic semantics, but the way I look at it:

Estimate: Broad guess at what the problem will possibly cost - without actually looking at the problem.
Diagnostic: Actually looking at the problem, working out exactly what it most likely is caused by.
Quote: Final cost based on the diagnostic.

I give a free estimate if people want it, but they are duly informed that it is based on the most likely cause only, and even that's only based on their (often incorrect) summation of the problem.

We have a minimum $55 fee for any service work, including the diagnostic if no repair is carried out.

We have one particular large service business around here that gives 'free quotes', but they treat them as estimates, so they always quote the absolute worst case scenario. E.G. no power - probably motherboard, $800 to fix. Customer comes to us, it's just the PSU, $120 drive away.

I'd much rather spend an hour looking at a problem to know I'm quoting the right thing, rather than just some pie in the sky guesstimation.
 
We offer free diagnostics without any issues, here is how we do it:

Free diagnostics - we look at the PC for them and tell them flat out how much it will cost to do the repairs. If it is unknown what may be causing the issues and we need to tear apart a laptop or something very time consuming then we charge for "advanced diagnostics" which is an hour labor.

We RARELY ever have anybody take advantage of us on this, I would say maybe 1 person will do this every 3 months or so. (have it diagnosed then walk out saying they will fix it or take somewhere else)

30% of computers are diagnosed at check in by asking questions to the customer - then we quote them immediately how much charges should be, if they agree we write up the rest of the work order and have them sign it. If it ends up being mis-diagnosed by the customer description (which can happen) then we will call them to inform them and request approval for the increased amount.
 
We started charging a "Bench Fee" several years ago for this exact reason. The customers know that if we put it on one of our benches and diagnose the problem, there is a $45 fee. We will wave this fee if the customer decides to have us do the work. In 10 years of doing this, we have had a handful of customers complain about this, and thats when I explain exactly why we do it.
 
I have free estimates in bold on my windows, I don't think that it is misleading in anyway and I do have the occasional, my computer is doing this-what do you think it will cost?, and I quote them a cost from out price list, that is the estimate.

The diagnosis is a $35 bench fee that waived if they decide to do the work. I have been burned in the past with giving away too much free information so I stopped.
 
My business is based on flat rate repair so I really don't run into this problem. My flats are all published on my site and I will confirm with the customer during the initial consult. That is for my residential customers. For my business customers a minimum of an hour labor is charged just for me coming onsite.
 
Simple for me, I do a special offer of £15 for diagnostic & initial consultation. As I work on an on-site basis only it covers running costs. Then if the customer wises to go ahead with any work I waiver the £15 and just charge the cost of providing the service.

Works very well for me. Sometimes people don't beleive "free" and seem to prefer to pay a small token amount for a genuine service - which is what I am! :D
 
I don't offer free diagnostics either. I think some people's logic is that free diagnostic will bring more people in the door and therefor more money. I really disagree with this and I think it's a big mistake.

If someone isn't willing to pay a $40.00 diagnostic fee that gets waived if they go ahead with repairs anyway (or another service), then they are not worth my time.

These are not the kind of customers you want to cater to. They are the cheap skates, tire kickers, etc. These people won't come back to you once they have another problem, they will just shop for the lowest price they can find once again.

Instead of wasting 30-60 minutes taking a look at someone's laptop who doesn't want to pay for a diagnostic, I could spend 30-60 minutes doing more marketing to bring in higher quality customers who don't mind paying good money for good service.

More customers DOESN'T mean more money, but it GUARANTEES more work / stress. My business has skyrocketed ever since I stopped competing with business who worry about offering free diagnostics and the lowest price and started to concentrate more on attracting affluent customers who know quality services comes at a price.

You need to weed out people who will waste your time and a diagnostic fee is a great place to start.
 
I'm having an issue with this question myself. I run my business using a flat fee for virus removal, router install etc. another for system optimization, another for hardware install. I have no store-front and won't allow customers to come to my home. So my calls are done onsite or are brought back home to repair. I was debating about charging a "roll-out fee" ($20)to cover the ever increasing cost of gas etc. This would be in addition to my flat fee. I also liked the idea of a FREE diagnostic with any repairs. If not repaired I would charge a fee, but I don't think this will fly due to my flat-rate pricing.
Any suggestions as to the better way to go? Thanks for any suggestions!
 
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