How much to charge for an EICR

EICRs are the most under priced job in the trade. Everybody wants one, everybody wants it cheap, and half the electricians doing them are earning less per hour than the apprentice they trained. If you have ever driven forty minutes to test a three bed semi for £120 and got home at eight o’clock writing the report, this one is for you.

There is no national price for an EICR. There is only your cost of doing one properly, and the number you are brave enough to say out loud.

What the job actually costs you

Price the whole job, not the time on site. A domestic EICR is rarely one visit and done. It is the call, the diary slot, the drive, the test, the report writing, the phone call explaining the C2s, and often a follow up visit to quote the remedials.

At a modest £48 an hour that job costs you £224 before you have made a penny of profit. If you charged £150 for it you did not have a cheap day, you had a loss. Do three of those a week and you have built yourself a very busy way of going backwards.

A sensible price ladder

Price by circuits, not by bedrooms. Bedrooms tell you nothing about the consumer unit. Ask two questions when they ring: how many circuits are in the board, and is there an outbuilding or a garage supply. Then quote from a ladder you have worked out in advance.

Those are not fantasy numbers. Members are getting them week in week out in ordinary towns, not just inside the M25. The ones getting £120 are not cheaper because their area is poorer, they are cheaper because nobody ever told them to stop.

Never quote the EICR on its own

The report is not the product. The outcome the customer wants is a safe, legal, lettable property with the paperwork to prove it. So sell the outcome and price the whole thing.

Offer two options on the phone. Option one is the inspection and report. Option two is the inspection, the report, and a fixed price to put right anything coded C1 or C2 up to an agreed value, booked in on the same visit where possible. Landlords take option two most of the time because it ends the problem instead of starting it.

That second visit you were going to make anyway is where the money is. You are already there, the board is already open, and the customer already trusts you. Quoting the remedials on the spot turns a £280 job into a £700 job without a single extra lead.

Stop competing with the £99 crowd

There will always be somebody cheaper. There is somebody out there doing a full EICR in ninety minutes for £99 and coding everything satisfactory so nobody complains. You cannot beat that and you should not try. What you can do is make the comparison irrelevant.

Three things do it. First, tell them exactly what your inspection includes and how long you will be in the property, because the cheap one never says. Second, show them a sample report so they can see what they are buying. Third, say clearly that you will explain every code in plain English and never invent remedial work. Landlords have been stung by both extremes and they remember whoever sounds straight.

Where the repeat work comes from

One EICR is a job. Ten landlords is a business. Every certificate expires in five years, and most landlords own more than one property, so the customer you look after this week is worth booking again long after you have forgotten them.

Do the boring thing that almost nobody does. Put the expiry date in a diary with a reminder set for four months before, and write the reminder as a note to the customer, not a note to yourself. Then send it. That single habit fills a quiet week every single year and it costs you nothing but the fifteen minutes it takes to set up.

If you want more of this work rather than more of these customers, getting work from landlords and letting agents is a different skill again, and worth learning next.