{"id":3347,"date":"2021-03-28T14:24:06","date_gmt":"2021-03-28T21:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/?p=3347"},"modified":"2021-03-28T14:24:21","modified_gmt":"2021-03-28T21:24:21","slug":"the-pitfalls-of-free-estimates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/the-pitfalls-of-free-estimates\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pitfalls of Free Estimates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We offer free estimates for new landscape projects. Like anything free, these estimates are a loss leader to get new work, each consultation and estimate can take 1-5 hours or more of our time, equaling about $200-500 and up.<\/p>\n<p>One frustrating thing about this process is that many people take this time for granted, or are not responsive when we send out our estimates. A colleague of mine summed up his feelings on the matter- &#8220;You were worth several hours of my time, surely, I am worth 5-10 minutes of yours.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This too has long been a pet peeve of mine (<a href=\"http:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/estimate-etiquette-the-good-and-bad\/\">see this post from 2010<\/a>). Yet, sometimes people to acknowledge the work we put in. Last year a prospective client gave me a $250 restaurant gift certificate for my time, even though we didn&#8217;t win the job. Yesterday, I got this delightful note following a consultation:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3348\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3348\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3348\" src=\"http:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Email.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"630\" height=\"368\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Email.jpg 630w, https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Email-450x263.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3348\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A delightful client email<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We offer free estimates for new landscape projects. Like anything free, these estimates are a loss leader to get new work, each consultation and estimate can take 1-5 hours or more of our time, equaling about $200-500 and up. One frustrating thing about this process is that many people take this time for granted, or &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/the-pitfalls-of-free-estimates\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Pitfalls of Free Estimates<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3347"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3350,"href":"https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347\/revisions\/3350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oclandscape.com\/ocblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}