I’ve interacted with probably close to 50 contractors of various trades for my house. They all insist on physically coming to give an estimate and a good chunk end up completely ghosting you. Most of them could have done an estimate over zoom -- definitely an interesting bunch of folks.

I found thumbtack to be pretty good for small jobs.

The reason for the physical visit is because a lot of trades work is the computer equivalent of "hey, I just want to get Okta retrofitted to this web app", where that the web app is 25,000 lines of php and perl written at various different times by developers of varying skill levels.

Ghosting is because they don't need your work right now and are kind of dumb or ADD with bad "back office". The ones who don't ghost want onsite estimates too, because they want to size you up as a legit client, and make a sales impression. (Smooth talking white guys for the estimate, Latin Americans for the work, possibly day laborers not employees)

Small ones like leaky pipe or drywall, when the owner (or sole proprietor) is the laborer, they just come out and do on first visit.

That seems to be changing. I've had a couple give me an estimate over text/email and when I ask if they want to come look at it, they are obviously reluctant to do so.

They're probably also being ghosted by their prospects and don't want to waste the drive time.

My neighbor will have 4-5 contractors come over to quote a job. Half the time he ends up doing it himself.