On Jun 23, 2:38 am, mm wrote:
On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:19:35 -0700, RicodJour

**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?

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.

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.

I can't speak for anyone else. I'm sure you'd find people that would
take your gladly take your guarantee (more on this later).

Whether the kitchen was a direct replacement or not, whether the
layout was done yesterday or forty years ago, the odds are great that
it could be improved upon.

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.


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.

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,....

I don't know of any carpet installer, painter or fairly
"straightforward" trade that charges for estimates. There was an
architect I knew - didn't really like his work or his ways - that
would visit a client for the first time, then send them a contract in
the mail. If the owner didn't sign it without any questions, he
wouldn't answer their phone calls. It takes all types.

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.)

Effective, but I doubt either of you were happy with the way it turned
out.

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!

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.

Guaranteed measurements are dangerous. If you guarantee a measurement
to the wrong guy, and the measurements turn out to have some problems,
the guy will take you to the cleaners. It's also dangerous for the
contractor. An error in the measurement means lost time. The owner
might just want to pay for the replacement cabinet, and ignore the
contractor's lost time. Obviously the contractor would have other
ideas.

Construction is all about risk. If you are not thoroughly and
intimately familiar with construction, and all of the potential
pitfalls, you'd be nuts to willingly assume more risk to get a
slightly better price.

R