Reader question: Should I charge just to come look at a job?
A handyman asks whether a trip or estimate fee scares off customers. When free looks pay, when they drain your week, and how to say the fee out loud.
A reader who runs a two-person handyman business wrote in last week. He spends most afternoons driving to look at jobs, writes a number on the back of a card, and then never hears back from about half of them. His question: should he start charging to come out, or will that kill his phone?
It is one of the most common questions in this trade, and the answer depends less on the fee than on how you say it and where people see it first.
What a free look really costs
Start with the math, because most owners never do it. Say a typical estimate visit takes 20 minutes of driving each way and 20 minutes on site. That is an hour. If you bill $90 an hour when you are working, every free look costs you $90 of time you could have sold.
Now say you do eight free looks a week and four turn into jobs. That is eight hours to win four jobs, or two hours of unpaid time per job won. On a $275 job, that cuts your real hourly rate by a lot more than most handymen guess. The calculator does the same kind of math for missed calls, and the logic carries over: time that does not book is money.
None of that means free estimates are always wrong. It means they have a cost, and the cost should be a choice.
When free still makes sense
Free looks pay when the job is big enough to carry them. A deck rebuild, a bathroom refresh, a full punch list before a house goes on the market. Anything where the ticket is several times your trip cost can carry a free visit, and charging for it may push the customer to the next name on Google.
Free also makes sense when you are new and need reviews. Across the 41,754 handyman listings we track, the median listing has only 3 reviews, and 71.7% have fewer than ten. If you are in that group, a free look that turns into a happy customer and a review is worth more than the fee. Once you climb past the 11 reviews it takes to beat three out of four listings, the math changes. People will pay to get on your schedule.
When a fee pays for itself
Charge when the job is small or unclear. "Can you come look at a leak" might be a $40 washer or a $4,000 subfloor. You cannot price it without seeing it, and you should not see it for free.
Charge when you are booked out more than a week. A fee is the cleanest way to sort the people who need you from the people who are collecting three quotes for a towel bar.
Charge when your no-show rate is climbing. A fee, even a small one, gets people to be home.
How to say it so it does not cost you calls
Most of the damage from a trip fee comes from springing it on people. Nobody minds a fee they knew about before they called. Here is what works.
Credit it back. "There is a $79 visit fee. If you book the work, it comes off the bill." This is the most common setup for a reason. The serious customer pays nothing extra, and the shopper pays for your time.
Put it in writing before the phone rings. Add a line to your Google profile services list and your website: "Diagnostic visit $79, credited toward the job." The Google profile guide shows where the services section lives. When the fee is already on the page, the people who call have accepted it.
Offer a photo quote first. "Text me two photos and I can usually give you a range today. If I need to see it, there is a $79 visit, credited to the job." This handles most small jobs without a trip at all, and it is the fastest way to answer someone who would otherwise call the next listing.
Keep the minimum separate. Many handymen have a two-hour minimum. That is a different thing from a visit fee, and mixing them confuses people. If you have both, say them on separate lines.
What to tell the reader
My answer to him was this. Keep free looks for jobs you can tell are bigger than a few hundred dollars from the first phone call or photo. Charge a credited visit fee for everything you cannot size. Ask for two photos by text before you get in the truck. Put the fee on your profile and your pricing page this week so nobody hears it for the first time on the phone.
Then track it for a month. Count looks, count jobs won, count the hours. If your close rate on paid visits is higher than it was on free ones, and in most shops it is, you have your answer. The pricing and quoting guide has more on presenting a minimum and good-better-best options once you are on site.
One warning. A fee does not fix a phone that goes unanswered. If people cannot reach you, they never hear the fee in the first place. Make sure calls get a text back within a few minutes before you change anything else.
If you would like someone to run any one service for you, the free 14-day trial needs no card. See the free trial page or text or call (801) 214-0250.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, handyman businesses among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor