As a customer, I like to see breakdowns because they help me judge if someone is bullshitting me. It’s very typical, for example, when you bring your car into the shop, for them to break down the parts and labor. The better ones will even estimate it in terms of an allocation of time spent per job, ie. brakes is $150 parts and $375 in labor, based on 2.5 hours at $150/hour, or whatever.

Whether or not they’re charging a competitive price per hour or inflating the hours estimate, these are marginal issues compared to an overall level of transparency that makes it easier to trust that I’m not being given some random price.

If someone just handwaves “$500” for some repair job, I don’t know if they’re giving me an honest price or just sticking it into me as far as they think they can based on my zip code. I won’t necessarily know if I’m being bullshitted on a broken down estimate either, but it helps me make a judgment as to $500 being a reasonable number if there’s a $200 mother board replacement involved.

For what it’s worth, I have no intention of shopping around on the price of a part if I can’t do the labor myself. And if I can do the labor myself, I’m not coming to your shop for a quote in the first place.

Also, in this day and age, people are pretty used to price transparency. When you can go online and see the last sixteen tax assessment and sale prices for every home in your neighborhood, why is this repair guy being cagey about the price of a thermocouple as part of a $200 repair job?

If this really bugs you, however, and perhaps if you’re the traditional sort, my suggestion to you in this situation is to simply tell people you are more than happy to quote them a price that breaks down labor at $X per hour and parts at cost [plus 10% if you like] – or to do the job at 1.5X/hour if they supply their own or screw it up themselves.