Three quotes for the same job, three times apart — what actually differs

01Start with four boundaries, not the number

Put the three quotes side by side and, before looking at any figure, check whether each one states these four things.

• Where does the work stop? At submission, at approval, or at certificate in hand? Between those points sit responses to queries, the interview, the acceptance reply and collection — each needing someone to chase it.
• Are the ongoing obligations included? Approval is not the end: periodic reports, quota reconciliation and change filings follow. If they are not in the quote, they will be renegotiated later.
• Who bears an error? Rework or loss caused by a wrong classification or mis-prepared file — borne by whom, and how. A quote silent on this is a quote that does not carry it.
• Are one-off and recurring fees separated? A single blended figure hides what still has to be paid in year two.

The practical move is to send all three parties the same work breakdown and have each mark every line "included / excluded / charged separately". Once that is done, most "three times apart" turns out to be three different jobs.

02Where the cheapest quote is actually saving

Not on margin — on people and on liability.

• The judgement step is dropped. No classification analysis; the most common category is used off a template. Fast, but the consequences of a wrong category fall on the client.
• The chasing is dropped. The file goes in and that is that; responding to queries is billed separately. Yet most of the elapsed time on this line is consumed by exactly those exchanges.
• Translation and technical argument are dropped. Chinese technical documents go in machine-translated. If the technical substance does not survive the translation, the tier drops — a gap that can be many times the fee.
• Liability is dropped. No clause in the contract addresses outcome or responsibility at all.

03What a higher price should be buying

A higher figure is not automatically better. A premium worth paying corresponds to three verifiable things: judgement first (classification and route decided before documents are gathered, because doing it the other way round means preparing the wrong set), conclusions you can trace (an official source for every position, so you can check it yourself), and the continuing obligations taken over rather than only the one-off filing.

Conversely, if the premium buys only "we have connections, we can get it through", the money is buying uncertainty — connections cannot be written into a contract, and cannot carry responsibility when something goes wrong.

04What the quote itself should look like

• Government fees listed separately from professional fees. Blended, you cannot judge what the service itself is worth.
• Deliverables named — which documents, forms and reports. "Assistance with the process" is not a deliverable.
• Assumptions and exclusions stated — on what basis the price was set, and what triggers additional charges.
• Payment tied to milestones, not to elapsed time.

Scope, complexity and stage differ so much between projects that no price range is given here — a range would only be applied to a project it does not fit. If you are holding several quotes and cannot see where they diverge, send the scope columns and our advisers will lay them out against a single work breakdown before anyone talks about which is expensive.