There is a large sign company not too far from us that gives complete free site visits and drawings up front. They say this, but I don't believe them.
I know the guy/owner for about 20 years or so and he's very much the businessman, but the company depends on volume and not quality. He's been doing it this way ever since I knew him.
They are on every bid list in the country. They bid so low to get the job [really... get their foot in the door] and once they have the job, they start jacking everything up here and there a little until the job becomes more profitable for them. However, I know of quite a few jobs where this has gone south for them for a different reason. They start cutting corners to make it profitable.
:Oops: One in particular [and very recent] where they bid out about 1/2 million, got the job where everyone else was around 1.2 million and then the chit started to fly. Where the specs were to be clear acrylic, silk screened and flooded, they decided to flatbed print and use vinyl as the backer on plain plexi. There were about 2,000 of these signs. I know, because we did the flatbed printing. Their customer turned the job down, because of the vinyl backer. I have no idea how they knew the difference of flatbed vs. screening, but then I heard the other signs were refused that we had nothing to do with for other reasons.... the main one being they substituted substrates and materials and thought the customer wouldn't know the difference. Ha, but they got caught. They ended up having to do the entire job over not twice, but thrice... because the dumb ass still cut corners.
If you want to give free quotes and all the information, don't try to recoup your costs by adding them in at the end or downgrading your own specs. Be up front and tell them if what they want is information, you will gladly do a site survey for them or just bid the job out using their parameters and hope for the best.