[Question] Quote

[Perform Computers]

Hey all,

Hope you doing well.

I have 4x desktop workstations I have to fix for a school. The client just said the PC's don't work so I got to troubleshoot them to give the client a quote on how much it'll cost to fix them.

My question:

If I spend let's say 4 hrs labour on troubleshooting the PC's to give an accurate quote, can I charge for that labour?

I just don't want to spend 4 hrs seeing what's wrong, quoting the client and they say, "No thx". Which means 4 hrs gone.

Am I allowed to say, "The quote comes to x-amount. If not accepted there's a 4 hrs labour charge for troubleshooting the problems".

Can I do this?

[Martinco]

Yes, most certainly. I think this is normal practice that if the quote is not accepted, that there is a minimum charge.
Just make sure your quote charge does not scare the customer away and that you inform the customer that if not accepted there will be a charge.
In some instances you are going to end up with some "free" PC's

[AndyD]

I would imagine you can charge for your quotation if you state the costs up-front to the customer. The problem is that the customer won't perceive the quote as having any value, regardless of how long it takes you to fault-find, so they often object paying for it.
Maybe instead of charging for a quote you should rather sell the customer a full professional 2 or 3 page report on their faulty PC which would outline exactly what they have and what is wrong with it, how viable the machine is due to it's age and capabilities, whether it's suitable to run recent software and OS's and even an indication of how worthwhile any repairs might be. You could then also give them a separate quotation for free so to speak.

[Perform Computers]

Thank you gentlemen.