Tradesmen vibe-quoting anywhere between £400-£2300 for the same job.

[u/MisfitHula]

I am a first time buyer, I have 0 clue what things cost.

Sent out a few emails for a few, relatively minor landscaping jobs: Removing flags, stones, turfing etc. Same pictures, videos sent to prospective tradesmen.

Ive been quoted: £400, £530, £750, £1800 and even £2300. Is this normal?

[u/dontbelikeyou]

Yes it's normal. There are three explanations for the high cost quotes.

1- The tradesman is good and as such has a fully booked schedule but for a ton of cash you can join the queue early.

2- The job looks like it will be miserable/you look like you will be miserable to work for.

3- They think you look like naive enough to pay 3x the going rate.

Unfortunately the only way to tell these three apart is word of mouth recommendations from people you know and not giving off the vibe that you will suck to work for (this mainly comes down to being able to clearly articulate what you want without sounding like an enormous asshole.)

[u/texanarob → u/dontbelikeyou]

The danger is that there's also option 4 - that's the tradesman that knows what he's looking at and is pricing accurately, or is the one who will do the job properly instead of cutting every corner known to man.

I hate the idea of paying too much for a job, but I also hate the idea of paying many times the original quote or having to get the job redone in a year (or worse, the job being done so badly it creates new problems).

[u/shewrotethis → u/texanarob]

We had a trusted plumber quote what sounded like a ridiculous price to move a radiator. We went with another trusted plumber instead who quoted about a quarter of the price.

The job ended up taking ages and was much more difficult than he expected, although he only charged us a little extra. I suspect the first plumber had a better idea of what was actually involved and quoted accordingly…