Home Depot Wants $100 to Measure Kitchen

[ScottO]

My friend is in the market for a kitchen remodel. He says Home Depot wants $100.00 to just come out and measure. I've never heard of this before. Is this common?

ScottO.

[Nancy Young]

"ScottO" wrote

Do they apply the money to your order? I can see why they wouldn't want to come do your measuring then have you order your cabinets from somewhere else.

nancy

[hallerb]

yeah sad too many windowshoppers.

you can take your measurements to lowes and their kitchen designer will come up with a nice plan

[Meat Plow]

Does HD subcontract out for stuff like this? Seams reasonable enough for what the remodel job might cost.

[Brent Bolin]

Just did this. The money is refunded/applied to your order.

[RicodJour]

Which is pretty standard. I started charging for estimates a long time ago. Same deal. You sign up, you get a refund. Cuts down on the tire kickers. It also lets people know that you value your time, and you expect them to do the same.

R

[newman]

Which is pretty standard. I started charging for estimates a long time ago. Same deal. You sign up, you get a refund. Cuts down on the tire kickers. It also lets people know that you value your time, and you expect them to do the same.

R

[Madx]

So then a person with a remodel job would have to pay $300-500 up front to get 3 - 5 bids and then only $100 would be credited back. Seems like quite a racket. Why even be the low bid. You could make a living just going out on estimates - just give an outrageous bid. I will never pay for a quote. It's highway robbery.

[Mick Collens]

A bid is for a job, with all the specifications & plans laid out already. Basically....... a bid sheet

It's absurd to think a real company would perform lay-outs, design, specifications, and such, just to satisfy your curiosity.

With that logic, why would anyone want to be an architect, and work for free?

[RicodJour]

Wouldn't it be more like burglary since we're talking about houses? ;)

You've heard the old saying, there is no such thing as a free lunch, right? Well, it's true. You may not think you're being charged for that "free" estimate, but you are. The contractor just buries it in his price somewhere. I prefer to be more upfront about it.

It requires effort to prepare an estimate. There's the site visit, discussing the customers wants and needs, working up the estimate itself, then sitting down with the customer to review the estimate and point out where there are areas where money could be saved, or areas where more money will be required to do it right. In short - educating the customer.

Where do you think that time comes from? I have no more hours in my week than you do. I can't just ignore hours anymore than your boss will ignore hours if you decide to skip work. From your comment, it's obvious that you're not the boss or I wouldn't need to explain this stuff to you. An estimate and presentation might take three hours or more. What do you feel would be a reasonable amount of money to charge for that time?

Since you brought up the 3-5 bids, where does that come from? Do you think that somehow gives you a better project or saves you money? It doesn't work that way. Most people that get more than a couple or three bids are simply price shopping. They think that all contractors are interchangeable and will pick the lowest bid. My work is far above the norm and so are my prices. You and I would never get past the initial phone call. I screen potential customers at least as carefully as the owner screens me. If someone is price shopping, there are other contractors who are eager to race each other to the bottom of the barrel. I'm not. I've never been the low bid, and if I was informed I was, besides being shocked, I'd assume I'd missed something and go racing to double-check my estimate.

When you hear about a remodeling project where there were horrendous cost overruns, it's usually due to an owner price shopping, taking the lowest bid and hoping for the best, or because an owner doesn't understand the correlation between what they'd like done and what has to be done. Both scenarios are recipes for disaster.

R

[Scott]

While I appreciate your comments, to suggest that consumers shouldn't shop around is ludicrous. Also, to suggest that the person who bids more must be the better provider is just as bad. As a person soliciting for work, you are a salesman. To suggest that all sales people should get paid to show their wares is unbelievable. I suppose when you go car shopping, you just go and buy from the first dealer you stop at. Of course not! You shop around to find the best price AND service. I'm not saying I don't believe that your time is valuable it's just the nature of the beast and you decided to go into this line of work so you must deal with the occasional window shopper. By far the best recommendation is word of mouth and no complaints filed against you at the BBB. I have no reason to believe that you don't do quality work but I'm sure the scammer ready to rip me off would say his work is top notch too. Using your logic, if he's more expensive, it must be true!

[mm]

I don't think he said that. IN fact he didn't say how to find a good contractor.

In this case, it seems to me that no one would have to pay 300 to 500 for 3 to 5 estimates.

I've never done this, but are these 100 dollar estimates in writing, with a drawing, showing what size cabinets are used?

So you pay for one, and you get one, and then you take the drawing to the other guys, and get an estimate from them for the same size, type, etc, cabinets. They don't have to come to your house, they don't have to measure. How much, if anything, do they charge for that?

Admittedly if you hire one of the ones who have never been to the house, I think they will all insist on measuring themselves, after the contract is signed**. How much would they imbed in the contract for doing so? Whatever, you'll be paying no more than 100 dollars extra for the first guy to come out.

**Although maybe not if the customer a release that he measured and he's accurate, and will pay extra expenses. Surely if I'm just replacing the cabinets I have with identically sized cabinets, I can measure the size myself. Rico, would you trust me to do that, if I signed a release too?

[RicodJour]

Wow, Scott. I have absolutely no idea where you came up with any of that. I never said that people shouldn't get bids and I never said that someone who bids more is a better provider (whatever that is). I also didn't say that more expensive equals better, although there is a definite correlation between cheap being shoddy. Read what I wrote again. Don't read into it, just read it.

A car is a commodity. You'll get the exact same car from any dealer. The work I do is not a commodity. I am the exclusive worldwide distributor of me and my work. Who else is supposed to determine how I run my business? You? Some supposed competitor contractor?

I am also not a salesman. You are, of course, absolutely right that word of mouth is the most effective advertising. I have a lot of experience and a lot of work that speaks volumes without me saying a word. That's why I haven't done any advertising in fifteen years. I'm not trying to grow into some huge company where I'll be counting beans and on the phone all day. I've found my niche, I've very happy with it and see no reason to change.

Since I am not a salesman and have no need to sell myself or my work I really don't have to deal with window shoppers. I'm sure that you'd agree that the sooner that two people come to an understanding the better. I am very clear from the beginning about everything I do.

R

[Nancy Young]

"mm" wrote

Exactly what I have been thinking. The original question concerned paying Home Depot to send someone to your house to measure. I don't even know if they tell you how much the job will be. Sounds like they are measuring and doing a CAD layout for you. What's to stop you from taking that to some other supplier of cabinets? Nothing.

I think that the bidding to do the job should be separated from the purchase of the cabinets in this discussion. No where has anyone said that Home Depot is going to do the job, just measuring to order the cabinets.

Exactly.

I brought in my kitchen measurements to the store (Channel Lumber). The guy put the specifics into the computer and laid things out as I asked. After we hammered out a few changes, he ordered the cabinets. I don't think they would have been responsible if I messed up, and believe me, it was an adventure due to a couple of unforseen things.

nancy

[RicodJour]

Nope. There's no up side to that. I don't know who the other guy is and whether he's competent or not. The odds that I'd create the same kitchen layout are entirely non-existent.

A guy I used to work with told me a story about a friend of his that had a carpet business. The guy got sick of having the exact scenario you described happen to him. Someone would take his written estimate, with room measurements, and shop it around. In other words this guy was doing the estimating work and people were taking advantage of him. Know how he fixed that? He started deducting 2' from every dimension on the written estimate. He actually had an owner call him up screaming that his measurements were wrong! The owner had given it to some other guy who never bothered checking the measurements, ordered the carpet, went to install it and...oops!

R

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I don't think you understand. There are some contractors that fall into a different territory altogether. My stepfather was one. He had all the work he could handle and never did any advertising or selling. People sought him out and were willing to pay what he asked. There was no price negotiation. He gave a price and that is what people paid and in all the years of doing that, I don't recall a single job that was turned down because he was "high priced". They were willing to pay for his considerable skills. They were not out getting multiple bids because they knew what they wanted and they knew who they wanted to do the work. He chose who he wanted to work for and turned away a lot of work and maintained a 6 to 12 month backlog.

[Tom G]

20 years ago, designed and sold kitchen remodels for Sears. They advertised free estimates and design. So most people would call us to come out, measure, and design the kitchen remodel. They expected drawings which they then took to Home Depot to order the cabinets. We got in the habit of making up a separate drawing for them that had no cabinet sizes on it and usually had one or more cabinets that weren't to scale so the Home Depot couldn't take off our drawings. On the other hand, I recently designed a kitchen remodel for my mother's basement kitchen. Simple, two walls, open ended so cabinets didn't have to fit within end walls. I tried to order cabinets from Home Depot and they flat out refused to order any cabinets until I had their man come out and measure. I tried to explain my credentials and the simplicity of the job but no way. It was their way or hit the road. Menard's had no problem with my measurements. Home Depot wouldn't order any cabinets even if I gave them the cabinet size numbers and said "Order It". They would however let me buy the in stock one design finished or unfinished cabinets they carried.

Tom G

[RicodJour]

When businesses are bought and sold, there is often substantial compensation for "goodwill". Your stepfather had it. It's insurance against the lean times, and gravy in the fat times. It doesn't come free, it has to be earned. It can only be earned by building a solid reputation based on quality work, honesty and sound business practices. It can't be deposited in a bank, but is often more valuable than cash. It opens doors, alleviates tension and is good for the health of all involved. Unfortunately it can't be bottled - but maybe that's a good thing.

R

[mm]

In this case, I was just replacing the cabinets with the exact same sizes, but I don't blame you for saying no. I'm glad I asked and I'll assume everyone would tell me no.

It would still be only two estimating trips, one for the first guy, and one for you or whoever was actually going to do the job.

If he charged 100 dollars, or even 30 dollars for the estimate, he shouldn't have done that. But if it was free, and if the customer said he was going to get the job, ok. If it's in the middle somewhere, I can certainly see why he wanted to do it,....

Not the same thing at all, but when I was just a handy man, a friend of a friend hired me to put in a bit of wiring. She made it clear, no connecting to the fuse box in the basement of the apartment building (she owned one apartment that she wanted to rent.) Before she'd paid me everything, she started talking about my doing the run to the basement and connecting to the fuse box. I could have discussed it with her and said to her, "Just finish paying me for what I've done", but I was suspicious, so I took money to buy materials for the second part, that matched the amount she owed me for the first part, and then called and told her I was done. She took it pretty well, didn't yell at me or say anything bad to me. She might have said something to my friend, but nothing terrible, and he's far sneakier on his nice days than I am on my sneaky days, so he didn't think worse of me. (I finally got sick of him and his sneaky and selfish ways.)

Well, I'm sending a copy of this to an old girlfriend of mine, who might, even with the best of intenetions get an estimate from someone and later decide to go with someone else. She's also smart enough to probably double check the measurements, bur I'm reminding her and myself to definitely do so.

In fact even if there is no hanky-panky going on, it wouldn't hurt to double-check even a pro's meausurements. One doesn't want most of the hosue done only to find out there is no more of that color for sale, even if the carpet guy was going to pay for it.

[mm]

That's a good idea and frankly, it's better than deducting two inches from each carpet measurment.

You know who caused this, of course? Home owner prima donnas and whiners who measured wrong and then weren't man enough to pay for their own mistakes.

Hmmm. Pot, kettle, black. I did that once myself. I was 24, and I measured for my mother's 2 or 3 book shelves and told the lumber yard a too short length, and found the mistake after they cut, and I let them cut them again without my paying for the first boards. Which they I'm sure had to sell at a loss.

I was just visiting from out of town and didn't have a saw to cut them with. I've regretted this ever since, and I would just buy all 4 or 6 shelves now, and take the short ones home with me when I left.