The four numbers hiding inside one 'price'
When you ask a plumber 'how much?', you are usually asking four questions at once, and the honest answer to each one is different. Separating them is the single most useful thing you can do before any professional visits your home.
- The visit charge — what the professional is paid to travel to you, inspect the problem, and tell you what is wrong. This is the only number that can honestly be quoted before anyone has seen the job.
- The labour charge — what the actual work costs, once the problem is understood. A dripping tap and a corroded inlet line look identical from your side of the phone call.
- Materials — taps, wiring, capacitors, gas, cement. These are pass-through costs and you should always be told whether they are included or extra.
- The platform's cut — on a commission-based app, a percentage of everything above is taken by the app itself, and it is paid by somebody. Usually you.
Why a quote over the phone is almost always wrong
A professional who confidently quotes a final price for an unseen job is doing one of two things. Either they are quoting high enough to cover the worst case — in which case you overpay on every simple job — or they are quoting low to win the booking, and the number will move once they arrive. Neither is good for you.
This is why a separate, upfront visit charge exists. It buys you a skilled diagnosis from someone standing in your bathroom looking at the actual pipe. It is a small, honest, knowable number, and it is the one thing that can be agreed before the visit with no guesswork on either side.
On DigiKaragir, every professional publishes their own visit charge and you see it before you book. You compare it alongside their rating and how far they are from you, and you choose. The work itself you agree with the professional once they have seen the job — because that is the only moment either of you can be honest about it.
What the commission model does to the price
Commission-based platforms take a percentage of each completed job — a cut that professionals in the sector commonly describe as being in the region of a fifth to a third of what they earn. That money has to come from somewhere, and there are only two places it can come from.
Either the professional absorbs it, in which case a skilled tradesperson takes home materially less for the same work and the good ones eventually leave the platform. Or it is priced in, in which case the customer pays a premium that never touches the hands of the person who actually fixed the problem. In practice it is some of both.
There is a third, quieter cost. When the platform sits between you and the professional and takes a cut of the transaction, both of you have an incentive to complete the next job off-platform — which strips away exactly the safety machinery (verified identity, tracked visits, reviewable history) that made the platform worth using in the first place.
DigiKaragir takes zero commission. Professionals pay a small time-bound recharge to stay visible — like a mobile plan — and keep 100% of every rupee you pay them. That is the whole business model, and it is why the incentive to go off-platform largely disappears.
Seven questions to ask before anyone starts work
None of these are confrontational. A good professional will welcome all seven, because they protect them from an argument at the end just as much as they protect you.
- Is the visit charge separate from the labour charge, or does it come off the final bill?
- Now that you have seen it — what is the actual work, and what will it cost?
- Are materials included in that number, or billed separately at cost?
- If you open it up and find something worse, do you stop and call me before continuing?
- How long will it take, and will you finish it today?
- Is there any warranty on the work or on the parts you're fitting?
- Will I get a record of what was done?
Red flags worth walking away from
That last one deserves emphasis. On DigiKaragir, the professional must enter your four-digit Visit Shield PIN, and the app will only accept it from inside a geofence around your address. It is a small ritual that takes three seconds and proves the person standing in front of you is the verified person you booked.
- A price that rises sharply the moment the work is already half-dismantled.
- Pressure to pay in full, in cash, before any work has been done.
- A refusal to itemise materials, or materials that appear without being discussed.
- Being asked to cancel the booking in the app and 'settle directly' — this removes every protection you have, including any record that the person was ever in your home.
- A professional who will not verify their identity at your door.
The short version
Pay a fair, upfront visit charge to get an honest diagnosis. Agree the work only after the professional has actually seen it. Insist that materials are itemised. Never move the transaction off a platform that is protecting you. And prefer a model where the person doing the work keeps what you pay them — because a professional who is paid properly has no reason to cut a corner in your home.