Two kinds of job, two answers
Garage owners ask this because they have been burned: a price given over the phone, a car that turned out to be something else, an argument at the counter. The honest answer is that you do not quote every repair without seeing the car. You quote the jobs that can be priced from the registration and a description, and for everything else you collect enough to have a useful first conversation. The website's job is to do both, and to say plainly which is which.
Answer one: the fixed-price menu
Services, tests, brakes, tyres, batteries, air-con, alignment. These are priced by vehicle band or engine size and they do not change when the car arrives, barring something the driver would want to know about anyway. They go on the Services and prices page as a menu, and where your garage software has online booking, they are the jobs the driver can book directly with the price shown.
The registration does most of the work. Autoflow, Garage Hive, Shopmonkey and Tekmetric look up the vehicle and place it in the right band, so the driver sees the price for their car, not a range for all cars. The confirmation carries the same price as the page.
The menu is also a trust document. A garage that publishes prices for the common jobs is telling the driver that the uncommon ones will be handled the same way.
Answer two: the fault form
Noises, warning lights, leaks, judders, intermittent faults. Nobody can price these from a phone call, and pretending to leads to the argument at the counter. What you can do is collect the registration, the symptoms in tick boxes, photos or a short video, whether the car is driveable, and a call-back slot. Then a technician rings back at the chosen time, already knowing the car, and gives one of three things:
- An honest range, with what would move it up or down.
- A diagnostics fee, stated, with what it covers and how it is credited against the repair.
- A booking for a look, if neither of the above is possible.
That call takes three minutes instead of ten, and the driver has been told the truth, which is what they wanted more than a number.
Saying which is which
The whole thing fails if the driver cannot tell which path their job is on. Three places carry the same line:
- Home page: "Services, MOTs, brakes and tyres are fixed price and bookable online. For anything else, send us the fault and we call you back."
- Services and prices page: the menu, then "Not listed? Tell us the fault."
- Repairs and diagnostics page: the fault form, with "Common jobs are priced on our menu" linking back.
A driver with a brake squeal goes to the menu. A driver with a knock goes to the form. Nobody fills in a form for a service, and nobody expects a price for a noise.
The diagnostics fee
State it. A driver who knows that diagnosis costs a fixed amount, is done by a named technician with named equipment, and is deducted from the repair if you do the work, sees a fair process. A driver who is told "we'll have to have a look" and receives a bill for the looking sees a trap. The fee belongs on the Repairs and diagnostics page and in the call-back conversation.
After the car arrives
Quoting continues in the workshop. If the technician finds something the driver did not book, the honest process is: photograph it, send the photo with the price and the urgency, and do nothing until the driver approves. Autoflow's digital vehicle health checks, and the digital inspections in Shopmonkey and Tekmetric, send exactly that to the driver's phone for a tap of approval. The website's "How we quote and authorise" page describes this in advance, so the message on the day is expected rather than alarming.
Photo estimates in other sub-types
Some automotive businesses can go further from photos. A body shop estimates most cosmetic damage from two angles, a coin for scale and the registration for the paint code, with an inspection to confirm. An auto glass repairer quotes a chip or a windscreen from a photo and the registration, which gives the glass specification, and asks about insurance. A mobile mechanic states totals for common jobs with travel included and uses the fault form for the rest, with a plain line about jobs that need a workshop. The pattern is the same: price what the registration and a photo can price; collect properly for the rest.
What not to do
- Give a firm price for a fault over the phone to win the booking.
- Publish no prices and say "every car is different".
- Hide the diagnostics fee until the invoice.
- Take a fault enquiry with no photos and no call-back slot.
- Do extra work and explain it at collection.
Where this sits
Fixed-price menus for the jobs that can be priced, a fault form with photos and a call-back for the ones that cannot, and a plain page on how you quote and authorise once the car is in, are all part of every automotive business website we build. The site does not pretend to quote the unquotable. It quotes what it can, collects properly for the rest, and tells the driver which is which.