I have a quote for new carpets from the local shop that everyone uses. The carpet I want is a cancelled order so it's on special offer at £18 p sq m. On the basis that this shop is very busy, i figure their fitting costs are probably high, but when pushed they offered no further discount.
I also asked a tiny brand new company that's just been set up by two experienced young fitters (but not experienced businessmen) to come and quote. They don't have the same range of carpets and the only one i liked was in the most expensive range. It's similar quality to the discounted one but priced at £28 p sq m (and I prefer it). They measured up yesterday and phoned me today with a quote that was way higher than the other one. This didn't surprise me as the carpet costs a third as as much but I said can we reduce it, so they said, well we can look at putting some joins in where they won't be visible and that will reduce the cost of the carpet considerably. Then they came straight round, in theory to remeasure on this basis, but they didn't get that far. The lead man just talked through his figures, repeatedly cutting them with no prompting from me, he made no sense to me or himself, and basically talked himself down by £1000, ending up (by chance - they didn't know it) at the same price i'd already been quoted. He was sweating and kept looking at his partner for confirmation/reassurance as he talked.
What alarms me is that this seems to be many many hundreds less than they said the carpet alone (with discount...) would cost, and it includes fitting, underlay etc. I realise he's a new business and needs some cashflow to get going but i genuinely worry that he hasn't understood the maths, and might have cocked up.
The upshot is I feel guilty for accepting his quote. Am I mad? Is it because I'm old enough to be his mother?!
It's the way I felt when watching that episode of the Apprentice where they had to run a laundry and one couple of daft girls offered to do a massive load of cleaning for £15. The customer kept saying 'are you sure' to give them the chance to realise their mistake, but they didn't. Kind of embarrassing....