Getting Bids. Is Not Giving Details of Charges Acceptable?

[Christine Swaidan]

Because of recent rain storms and older units I am in need of some repair work on a couple of units.

I contacted a GC that I found on a neighborhood website. He had a few positive reviews on Yelp. He’s on Houzz, also. He was very responsive. I called him one day and we met at both properties the following day.

One house needs new roof,

2 deck surfaces will need to be removed and resurfaced,

Repair drywall damage,

Scrape ceilings in four bedrooms

Replace 4 windows

Place new weather stripping on four doors,

Install 4 new fan lights (I provide those, he will do electrical).

So the second house is 10 minute drive and by the time we got there he gave me a bid of $39,500 for the first job.

So we did a walk through at the second house and I told him I would like a bid for that work also but I wanted it in writing.

He agreed but said doing the bids takes a lot of time and he charges for writing them up.$150 per bid but he would give me the bargain on $150 for both bids. Ok, I liked the guy, he was prompt, and I know it does take a lot to produce a bid so I agreed to the $150.

When I met him last night I got a list of the scope of the project—what we had decided needed to be done –at the price of $39,500. There was no breakdown of costs. I want to know how much for the roof. I want to know how much for the decks, and I want to know how much for the drywall repairs and windows.

Is this a typical way to bid a project? If I would have known he would not give details I would not pay for the bid—he had already figured out the cost on the 10 minute drive to the second project—which was bid in the same manner.

Am I being taken here or is this—not breaking down the numbers and charging for bids—standard. This is making it very difficult to get competing bids.