Sorry for the wall of text, it's a bit of rant

I know people will say it's just part of the job, but does anyone else here feel guilty about the fact that contractors probably spend an hour with you and then a couple more hours generating a proper bid? In that sense, I feel guilty getting multiple bids and having to pick one since the others also invested some time.

This led to a situation with a contractor who was very nice, walked with me through the projects but at the end, took 20 or so minutes and generated the bid on the spot. He did what in retrospect were salesman tactics, saying …