I have a hard time making myself do that. When I used to work with a company that did garage door installation, we would tell the customer exactly when we were going to be there, what we needed out of the garage (cars), and what we were going to do. 90% of the time we would show up, and that wouldn't be done. So we had to waste more time doing things that should have already been done. So showing up to someone else's location to do a job I would think would have a TON of variables in this situation.
To my knowledge, I've only lost one job over the years to a school removing letters from the back of their band trailer that was like 20 years old. I didn't hardly want it to begin with, and they beat around the bush about it for like 4 months. Well, they finally called, and had to have it in the next two days, and price was a HUGE issue to them. I said, if you can bring it to me, I can do it for X amt. So they called around, and got another company to come out for twice as much and do the job.
That annoyed me to no end because they were so bent on my pricing, then went w/ a company that doubled my price, and we had SO long to do the job. I guess the thing I learned was to take any control out of the customers hands, because they just don't the whole picture...and we can't expect them to. If you can assure the surroundings when you get there to not be a huge time waster, or have a clause that says if it's not what it's supposed to be when you get there, they may have more costs, then it may be worth it.
Sorry for the rant...
