The price we give you at the kitchen bench is the price on the invoice

On a Wednesday morning in October we pulled up at a house in Bossley Park at eight o’clock. By 8.33am the homeowner had a written quote in his hand. He said yes, the work was done, it was tested, and we were packing up by 9.43am with the compliance certificate issued.

That is not us being quick for the sake of it. It is what happens when the quoting is done properly and the price is settled before anyone picks up a tool.

Here is how we do it, and why.

We look at it before we price it

We do not price a job we have not seen, unless it is genuinely simple and already scoped. Photos are useful for working out whether we are the right people to call. They are not an inspection.

When we come out, we are looking at four things. The property itself, because the housing across South-Western Sydney comes from a lot of different decades and most homes have been added to at least once. The existing electrical work, which means the switchboard, what protection is actually fitted circuit by circuit, the earthing, the mains and their condition. Access, because a cable run through a crawlable roof space and a cable run through one you cannot get into are two different jobs. And the practical side: who is home during the day, how long the power can be off, whether there is a home office or a freezer full of food.

None of that is guesswork. If we cannot read something off the gear, we write down that we could not read it, rather than assuming what a house of that age usually has.

Two lists, not one

There is what you asked us to come out for, and there is what we found while we were there. We keep them separate on purpose.

What you called about stays in every option. It is the reason we are standing in your hallway and it does not get traded away.

What we found is a different conversation. We will show you, explain what it means in plain English, price it, and leave the decision with you. We do not fold it into the main job so that you cannot buy the main job without it.

If you tell us something is coming in the next few years, a granny flat, ducted air conditioning, an electric car, a kitchen being pulled apart, that is a third list. It changes what a sensible switchboard looks like today, and it is the only honest basis for building in extra capacity.

Three options, except when three options would be silly

For switchboard work, safety upgrades and genuine multi item jobs, we present three fixed prices. Essential, Recommended and Future-Ready, in that order, every time.

• Essential does the job you called about, done properly.
• Recommended is Essential plus the things we found on the day that we think should be done now, or that only make sense while we are already in there with the cover off.
• Future-Ready is Recommended plus provision for what you told us is coming, such as an EV charger.

The rule we hold ourselves to is that every option has to be a complete job you could buy on its own. A cheaper option is made by taking out work you do not have to do today. It is never made by taking out testing, protection or earthing. Those are not extras.

And we do not do this on every job. The morning in Bossley Park was one outdoor power point. One item, one price, no three tier presentation, because putting three tiers in front of someone who asked for a single power point is a sales exercise, not a quote. Most of the work we do is small like that. A fault that needs finding is the same: we diagnose it first as its own job, because nobody can honestly price a repair before they know what is broken.

The price is fixed, and we do not hide behind percentages

Our prices are built from a fixed price catalogue, not worked out on the spot. That is the whole point. You get a number, in writing, before we start, and it is the number on the invoice.

Sometimes there is something genuinely nobody can see until the switchboard cover comes off. Old backing board, mains that turn out to be undersized, cabling that is older than it looked. We will not handle that with a line saying price subject to what we find. That is how a fixed price quietly stops being fixed.

Then we ask once, and leave it with you

We present the options, we tell you which one we would pick and the reason for your place specifically, and then we stop talking. If it is a yes, we book it. If it is not, we agree an actual date to come back to it rather than leaving it floating.

We do not drop the price the moment someone pauses. A discount offered before anyone has complained just tells you the first price was not real. If the budget is the problem, we would rather stage the work or take optional scope out than pretend the job costs less than it does.

What we send out and what we do not do ourselves

The quote goes to you in writing. If the work needs a certificate of compliance for electrical work, it is issued and lodged, and it lands on the job record.

If you want a price on something, ring us and we will come and look at it.