e mail bidding?

[beastmaster]

Today I bid a small job by e-mail. It's a cut and leave job, some small birches and two small Calif. peppers. Should be all pole pruner stuff. I quoted a high price, but I felt the trees needed some special care. They were trimmed hard 5 years ago and now are over grown, spindly and out of control.
The job is 60 miles away. To far to drive just to do a bid, on a job that'll only pay a few hundred dollars. Yet a nice easy job if I get it and I am done in a few hours. Assuming the photo's are recent, and they are small trees, I don't see no problems, but it still goes against my better judgement. Any one else ever bid a job based only on pictures? How did it work out?
I also sent some references and photo's of other trees I have trimmed as per his request. I am waiting to hear back.

 

[imagineero]

Every quoting method has pros and cons....

I generally will only bid jobs I inspect, there's just too many variables. You get customers ringing up who are very pushy and insistent on getting a price then and there on the phone. I try a little humor, and a quick explanation of why I need to inspect. If that doesn't work I'm just as glad to see them call the next guy. People like that are often trouble, and I'm usually booked out a few weeks ahead anyhow.

The only exception is palm trims and palm take downs when they want to keep the rubbish. I do that sort of palm work at a set rate, and I win a fair bit of it. I only quote cocos palms this way. Other palms have too many variables.

I'm not doing qotes on demand since the start of this year. I do all my quoting on a saturday. There are pros and cons to this method too.... On the pro side, It sure does make the rest of my week easy! I service a pretty large area, and the traffic is shocking in sydney so its very time consuming to try to quote mid week. I generally get between 10-20 quotes to do on a saturday, and even though my area is pretty large, I can make an efficient loop out of it. It saves a lot of gas and time. I try to accomodate people a little time-wise, but I'm not going to add an extra hour to my day. Because I do it on a saturday, I can afford to spend a little more time at each quote. This really helps me win quotes. On the down side, you do lose a few that don't want to wait... but since I've got enough work going on most of the time I'm not too worried about it.

If you're going to quote by email, get clear pics, DBH and height, what it's over, power lines, ground surface (grass, gardens, pavers?) and access/distance to road. That gets rid of most of the surprises. In my experience, the average Joe is awful at estimating height though. Some way under, some way over. I try to get them to measure it against a known object, often a street pole, or the building if it's a multi story building.

Shaun

 

[sgreanbeans]

I do a lot of email action, but I always look at them in person. I had a REAL BAD experience with bidding on pics.....they failed to show the concrete and the cables, bad deal. So now I insist on looking at them, like he said, some peeps insist on a price over the phone, I too just would rather they call someone else. If they email me pics, I will give them a rough estimate to give them an idea, if they are cool with that then I go ahead and travel to look, but I don't commit until I see it, pics almost certainly hide something, even if it is something the HO don't recognize as a issue, something u need to see, wont be in the pics. Massive splits are often hidden by the canopy.

 

[treeman82]

One time I bid a job based on pictures. It was pruning branches off of a foreclosure house an hour and a half away. I bid it high, at $950... left at 6:30 in the morning with a friend's utility truck and whatever gear I could get in the boxes... I was home by lunch.

 

[Mike Cantolina]

I was emailed this pic a couple years ago for a price.

What would you guys bid these two trees at plus grind both stumps?

 

[imagineero]

I was emailed this pic a couple years ago for a price.

What would you guys bid these two trees at plus grind both stumps?

$1700 if they don't want the roots chased out.

 

[mattfr12]

$1700 if they don't want the roots chased out.

ya i wanna know what the hidden surprise is now, because the photo is making it look like easy money.

 

[arborjockey]

I was emailed this pic a couple years ago for a price.

What would you guys bid these two trees at plus grind both stumps?

Id murph that xmas tree lookn sum buck right across the sidewalk there. Then lay that udder sum #itch right across the road. Sub the clean up and stump grinding to a local gardner. My quotes $ 400 . I go home with $40 for my YANSI approved murph drop and proceed to drink malt liquor.:msp_biggrin:

Why don't you tell them $85 an hour including drive time? Then everybodies happy. And if their not at least they okayed your work via email and you can go after them.

 

[gorman]

I would never bid based solely on pics. Good way to screw yourself. But, I do email all my bids instead of paper. That works out great, all the bids are on the yahoo server, my computer, and the HO's computer. No way to lose a copy, get confused on what is gonna be done, or especially what the price was. I can access it right on the job from my iphone.

 

[arborjockey]

I would never bid based solely on pics. Good way to screw yourself. But, I do email all my bids instead of paper. That works out great, all the bids are on the yahoo server, my computer, and the HO's computer. No way to lose a copy, get confused on what is gonna be done, or especially what the price was. I can access it right on the job from my iphone.

And they can never say they never got because you can tell the date and time the email was opened.

 

[imagineero]

ya i wanna know what the hidden surprise is now, because the photo is making it look like easy money.

I'm guessing the power lines go through the cypress, and the foreground tree maybe out all over the road, with some power as well... or something like that. No real way to tell though from pics. Based on pics alone I'd go 1700, but you do need to see....

Shaun

 

[Mike Cantolina]

The arborvitae was as easy as it looked. The bank was much steeper than it looked though and the Norway Maple was larger and tighter than it appears. The street was busy so we had to rope every piece down so that nothing rolled out onto it and there were power lines on the street side. We were lucky to even get a grinder up to the arborvitae and the Norway stump was terrible. I did go out and look at the job in person, but if I hadn't I would've bid around 1200. I bid it at 1850 but should have made it higher because of the Norway stump.

$1700 was a decent guess, I thought it looked much easier from the pic.

It will always be a reminder to me to look at the job in person.

 

[OHWC]

I never ever bid jobs via pics. Too many people do not represent everything on a job trying to get low bids and a contract off of that.

If I can not look at it I do not do it.

 

[treemandan]

Id murph that xmas tree lookn sum buck right across the sidewalk there. Then lay that udder sum #itch right across the road. Sub the clean up and stump grinding to a local gardner. My quotes $ 400 . I go home with $40 for my YANSI approved murph drop and proceed to drink malt liquor.:msp_biggrin:

Why don't you tell them $85 an hour including drive time? Then everybodies happy. And if their not at least they okayed your work via email and you can go after them.

Great thinking! It sounds like Beasty just has a rudimentry pole saw job so that should work but I dunno how much of the other job is Murphable. Well I guess anything is Murphable with enough malt lickher.

 

[beastmaster]

Well I got the job. He said my bid and references got sent to his spam, thats why he hadn't got back to me sooner. I'm doing it Saturday. I let you all know how it went.