ScanToScopeStart freeOn the phone
The customer wants a price over the phone, and there are now three answers
Everything written about this call gives you the same two choices. Refuse and book the appointment, or give a range and hope she remembers the conditions. Both are sound advice and both were written before the phone she is holding could measure the room.
Two scans free. No card. Nothing for her to install.
What page one tells you to say
The advice on this question is not bad. It is just old, and it is mostly written for a different trade.
The strongest page on it comes from the plumbing and heating press, published in November 2022. Its answer is to explain why you cannot price what you have not seen, book the visit, and charge a minimum service call fee that covers your truck, waived if she buys the work. The reasoning is good. If you do not get the job, you paid for her window shopping.
The most recent page is from a software vendor and it says something more modern: do not dodge, give a range with the swing factor named, and never a number you will be held to. It also says to ask for photographs. That is better advice than the 2022 version and it is the first page on the subject that treats a remodel rather than a water heater.
Then the rest of page one is forums. Two threads on an electrical code board, two on a service software community, one on a heating board, one on a general contractor board, one on an auto shop owner forum. When the forums are that deep, it means the trade has been arguing about something for twenty years without anybody settling it.
Notice the trades, though. Plumbing, heating, electrical, auto repair. Nearly all of that advice is about a service call where the work is the same regardless of the room. A remodel is the hard case, because the number moves with dimensions and nobody writing these pages is pricing dimensions.
The sentence that dates the whole answer
Buried in that 2022 piece is one line that explains why the standard answer is incomplete, and it is worth reading twice. It allows that smartphones let the caller send you a picture or a video and measurements, and then dismisses all of it, because what is not shown over the phone has to be seen in person.
On photographs, that is correct, and we will say so plainly on our own site: a photograph is not a measurement. You cannot get the ceiling height out of a picture of a wall, and anybody who tells you a photo can be measured is selling you a number you will end up eating.
What the sentence misses is the sensor. A recent iPhone Pro has a depth sensor in it, and a depth sensor is a measuring instrument, not a camera. The phone in her hand on that call can produce real room dimensions. That was not true when the advice was written and it is still not reflected anywhere on page one.
So the choice is no longer refuse or guess. There is a third move, which is to get the room measured without either of you driving anywhere, and then price it properly off your own book before you commit to a number.
The call, and the ten minutes after it
Answer the question she asked
Do not dodge it. Dodging reads as either hiding something or not knowing your own prices. Give her the range your jobs in that category actually land in and name the thing that swings it. Baths like that usually run from here to here, and the big variable is whether the plumbing moves.
Say what decides the number
In one breath, not five. Ceiling height, whether any fixture moves, and what shape the subfloor is in. She is not learning estimating. She is learning that your figure is going to come from something, which is the opposite of what the last two guys told her.
Put the third option on the table out loud
I can get you a real number without either of us guessing and without me driving over this evening. I will text you a link. You open it on your phone, standing in the room, and it measures the space. Then I price it off my own numbers and send you the figure.
Be clear about when, and it is not now
Tell her she gets the number today or first thing tomorrow, not on this call. Nothing about this gets you out of doing the pricing. It gets you out of the drive.
Hang up and send the link
While it is still the warmest she will ever be. When the capture lands you read a scope brief with the quantities traced back to the room, check the lines against your own cost book, and then decide whether this one is worth seeing in person. Some of them still are, and now you know which.
What you must not say on that call
Four guardrails, because this is a call where a careless sentence costs real money.
Do not give her a firm number. Not a rounded one, not a probably, not a should be about. Homeowners remember the first figure they hear and forget every condition you attached to it, and that is true whether you were right or not.
Do not tell her an app will price her job. It will not. The link gets the room measured and writes up what is in it. You price it, against the prices you actually pay, and you are the one who signs your name under the figure.
Do not say she can photograph it and you will measure off the photos. You cannot, nobody can, and promising it is how you end up arguing in a driveway. If her phone has no depth sensor she photographs the room and types the room sizes in, and the scope labels those as typed so you always know which numbers came off a sensor and which came off her tape measure.
And do not oversell the link as a condition of talking to her. If she will not do it, you are exactly where the old advice left you: a range, a booked appointment, and a decision about the drive. You have lost nothing but a text message.
- No firm figure on the call, however hard she pushes
- Never say software sets the price. You set the price
- Never offer to measure from photographs, because nothing can
- If she will not capture the room, you still have the range and the appointment
Questions people actually ask
Should I ever give a price over the phone?
For flat rate work where the price is the same whatever you find, yes, and every page on the subject agrees. For a remodel, no, because the number moves with dimensions you have not got. A range with the swing factor named is not a price and is fine to give.
What do I say when she pushes for a real number?
That if you give her a figure now and it is off by thousands once you see the room, that is worse for both of you. Then offer the capture, because it is the only thing you can offer at that moment that is faster than a visit and more honest than a guess.
Can I quote a remodel off photos she texts me?
No. Photographs tell you condition, finish and what the last guy did wrong. They do not tell you dimensions, and a quote built on a guessed dimension is a quote you will eat. Nothing in our product measures from a photograph either.
What does the homeowner have to do?
Open a link in the browser already on her phone. There is no app to install and no account to make. On a recent iPhone Pro the depth sensor measures the room. On any other phone she photographs it and types the room sizes in. Photos upload one at a time as she takes them, so a weak signal at the back of the house does not lose the batch.
What if she never follows through?
Then you learned for the cost of a text message that she was price shopping, which is information the old answer only gave you after you had driven there. Keep the range you quoted and move on.
Do homeowners actually do this?
Some do and some do not, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling. The ones who are serious usually will, because they want the number as much as you do. Two scans are free with no card, which is enough to find out what your own callers are like before you pay for anything.
The next one of these calls
Give her the range, name the swing factor, and then send the link instead of booking the evening. Read the scope against your own book and decide about the drive after. Two scans free, no card, nothing for her to install.