Three Quotes, Two Thousand Dollars Apart, and None of Them Comparable

An owner brought us three quotes on a soft sidewall on a travel trailer. $6,800, $8,900 and $12,400.

His question was whether the $12,400 shop was taking advantage. The actual answer was that all three were describing different jobs, and only one of them was going to last.

What each quote covered

$6,800. Repair the visible soft area, refinish, blend. No moisture readings mentioned, no tap testing, no entry point work.

$8,900. Same area plus twelve inches either side, plus reseal the roof seam above it. Better, and it at least acknowledged the water came from somewhere.

$12,400. Tap test to map extent, moisture survey, entry point identified and corrected, substrate condition assessed with an allowance for replacement if needed, teardown stage, and the debonded area repaired to the mapped extent rather than the visible one.

The third quote was the only one that was going to still be fixed in five years. It was also the only one that admitted it might change.

Why cheap quotes are usually small quotes

Not because shops are dishonest. Because scoping properly takes time and produces bigger numbers, and quoting from a walkaround takes ten minutes and produces smaller ones.

A shop quoting the visible area is not lying. It is answering the question "what would it cost to repair what I can see", which is a different question from "what would it cost to fix this".

On laminated damage those two questions have wildly different answers, and the customer usually does not know they are asking the first one.

The five questions that make quotes comparable

Ask all three shops the same five things and the comparison becomes real.

1. "Did you tap test, and what area did you find?"

If the answer is a specific area, they scoped it. If the answer is vague, they quoted the visible damage. This single question separates the quotes more than any other.

2. "Where is the water getting in, and is fixing that in the quote?"

A wall repair without entry point correction fails from the same water on the same timeline. If a quote does not address the source, it is a temporary repair being sold as a permanent one.

3. "How many hours, and at what rate?"

Normalises everything. A $6,800 quote at 25 hours and a $12,400 quote at 55 hours are two different jobs, not two different prices.

4. "What is the substrate, and what happens if it has failed?"

Lauan rots, composite does not. If the substrate has failed, the repair is substantially larger. A quote that has not established which substrate the coach has, has not scoped the risk.

5. "What happens if teardown finds more, and how will you tell me?"

The right answer is a documented change process with photographs. The wrong answer is that nothing will change.

The scenario where the cheap quote is correct

It exists, and it is worth saying.

If tap testing genuinely finds a small contained area, the substrate is composite and dry, there is no active leak, and the damage is thermal rather than water, then a contained repair at the low end of $1,500 to $20,000 and up is the right answer and paying for a larger scope is waste.

Which is exactly why the questions matter. They are not a way of arriving at the expensive answer. They are a way of finding out which answer is true.

We quote contained repairs regularly and we tell people when a wall is fine.

What we do differently and what it costs

Our RV systems evaluation is $150. Tap testing, moisture readings across ceiling, sidewalls and slide floor joints, roof and penetration inspection, slide cycling and geometry, written report with photographs, findings prioritised, everything priced at posted rates.

Refundable as a credit against an authorized repair.

That is not free and we will not pretend otherwise. What it buys is a scope you can take to three shops and get genuinely comparable quotes against, which is worth considerably more than $150.

The uncomfortable part

If you take a properly mapped scope to three shops, the quotes converge. All three are now quoting the same job and the only variable is rate and efficiency.

That is worse for us than a market where we are the only shop that scoped it properly, and it is better for you. We publish our rates and our method anyway, because a customer who understands what they are buying makes better decisions and complains less, and both of those are worth more to us than an information advantage.