Why This Matters to You
You ring three electricians, you get three numbers, and they're nowhere near each other. One is half the price of the next. There's no way to tell whether the cheap one is efficient or whether they have simply left half the job out of the quote, and you find out which after the work has started.
That isn't an accident. Electrical quoting is genuinely hard to compare because most quotes don't state what they include. This post explains how the pricing actually works and gives you the specific questions that make two quotes comparable. It won't tell you what your job costs, because that depends on your house, but it will stop you comparing a complete quote against an incomplete one and picking the wrong builder of the two.
The Three Ways Electrical Work Gets Priced
Callout plus hourly. Used for repairs, fault finding and anything where nobody knows how long it will take until they start. There's a callout that covers attendance and a first block of time on site, then an hourly rate after that. This is the right model for a dead circuit, because pretending to know in advance how long a fault takes to find is guesswork dressed up as a quote.
Fixed price. Used where the scope is known. A switchboard upgrade, a set number of downlights, an EV charger install. You get one number and it doesn't move unless the scope moves. This is what you want for planned work, because it puts the risk of the job taking longer on the electrician rather than on you.
Per point or per item. Used mostly on new builds and larger renovations, where the job is quoted off a plan by counting light points, power points and circuits. Efficient for big jobs, meaningless for small ones.
The important thing is knowing which one you're being given. A number quoted over the phone for a job nobody has seen isn't a fixed price, it's an estimate, and the gap between the two is where most disputes live.
What Actually Drives the Number
When two quotes for the same job differ a lot, it's usually one of these, not greed.
- Access. A single-storey home with a clear roof space is a fraction of the labour of a two-storey with no access above the upper floor. Slab-on-ground with no wall cavity is harder again.
- Distance from the switchboard. Every new circuit is a cable run. A charger on the garage wall behind the board is cheap. The same charger at a detached shed sixty metres away needs much bigger cable, and possibly trenching.
- Switchboard capacity. If your board is full, work that needs a new circuit quietly becomes work that needs a new board. An honest quote flags that. A cheap quote sometimes just leaves it out.
- Materials specification. Downlights range enormously in price and quality, and so do switches, fans and chargers. Two quotes can differ by hundreds purely on what's being installed.
- The age of the house. Older wiring takes longer to work with and is more likely to reveal something. A 1968 Holden Hill house and a 2015 Greenwith house aren't the same job even when the task is identical.
- Whether compliance work is included. Testing, certification and any upgrade triggered by the new work all cost something. Leaving them out makes a quote look cheaper without making the job cheaper.
The Questions That Make Quotes Comparable
Ask every electrician who quotes you the same six questions. The answers, not the headline number, are what tell you which quote is real.
- Is this a fixed price or an estimate? If it's an estimate, what would make it change?
- What's specifically excluded? This is the single most useful question and very few people ask it.
- Does it include a Certificate of Compliance and testing? It should.
- What happens if you open it up and find a problem? A good answer is "we stop, show you, and price it before continuing". A bad answer is silence.
- What exact fittings are you supplying? Get the brand and model, not "quality LED downlights".
- Does my switchboard need anything for this to work? If one quote says yes and two say nothing, the two are probably not accounting for it.
Why the Cheapest Quote Is Often the Most Expensive
There are only a handful of ways to be significantly cheaper than everyone else on the same job. Cheaper materials, less time on site, skipping the compliance work, or not being licensed and insured. None of those are things you want, and all of them cost you later.
The version we see most is scope that has quietly been left out. The quote covers installing the thing, but not the circuit it needs, not the board work required to fit that circuit, and not the certification. It's a real number for an unreal job, and the difference appears as a variation once you're committed.
None of this means the most expensive quote is the right one either. It means the number on its own tells you very little, and the six questions above tell you a lot.
What We Do
Free quotes, fixed prices on planned work, and a written scope that states inclusions, exclusions and assumptions. For fault finding we tell you the callout on the phone before we come out rather than after we arrive.
If we think something might turn up once we open a wall or take a board off, you hear about it at quote stage. That isn't us hedging, it's us refusing to give you a comfortable number now and an uncomfortable conversation later.
