what would you do?

[orion_joel]

I think that maybe your industry Steve B. Is to some extent standardized. I mean for you at least, there is a consistency you are installing the same product every time, or i assume every time. With only a variance in area and number of dogs, maybe one or two others.

As for me an HT there are many different options, if he wants to sell and install a water heater, there are dozens of options. While he may have a standard model he offers, this does not mean pricing is not important, as well as the way you quote. If you knew you were bidding against two other competitors, and they were both most likely to offer a certain model. You could potentially craft a bid that takes advantage of this. Like making a generalization about advantages of this model above disadvantages of the other models can be beneficial.

I mean even if you do know the range of the other potential bids, it wont make a lot of difference, if the other guy is a half price guy, and the client is looking for the cheapest. But know this you can gauge what sort of effort you put into the bid. this also comes down to know your client and what sort of bid he is looking for.

[huggytree]

i was 100% correct about this guy from the start...he said my bid may be considered even if its higher...but it never was going to be....

when you cut the parts off the job and just focus on labor my price is 50-55% higher

these 2 guys im bidding against are new to business and dont understand that they are working for $10 per hour or less....they will realize after a year of banging their head against a wall and going no where....but for now they hurt the market...........its a growing part of the market and luckily it doesnt affect me very often.

this builder lied to me and use me just to get 3 bids that the customer asked for...he didnt find 2 cheap guys by accident....he got 2 cheap bids and 1 real bid...in a 3 bid situation im almost never the high bid.

i will probably not bid for this builder again...in the past ive bid 2-3 times for guys like this..hopefully the lesson i learned is to give them 1 chance....not waste my time 2 or 3 times..

he is one of the types who are going out of business right now...the low end and the extremely high end are going out of business weekly around here.

[Business Attorney]

While it is discouraging to lose a bid to competitors who are under-pricing their services, it is a fact of life. It's known as competition. When people are out of work, even if they realize that they are working for $11 an hour rather than $33, they may not care.

From the standpoint of the ultimate customer - the homeowner, not the remodeler - it is not his job to keep you in business at your customary rates. I need to paint my house this summer. I'll get several bids. I'll get references and assess the quality of their past work, how they prep the job, etc... But all other things being equal, if one is using expensive labor and another is using college students for half the price, I am not going to pay several thousand more for the same outcome.

In other posts you have given reasons for being a better value - you leave the job cleaner, you complete the job more quickly (we all know those remodeling jobs that drag on forever), etc... In cases where either the value-added aspect is not present or simply not enough to justify the significant difference in cost, you can reasonably expect to lose many of those bids. Since you obviously don't want to take on work where you don't get the price you think you need, you should concentrate on those jobs where you can justify the fact that your cost to the customer is higher than the weekend plumber.