FunHouse,

I totally agree and tell all of my customers the same thing "we might as well run additional wire(s) as you are already paying for the labor to drill the holes, pull the wire, etc." Most of our "TV jacks" are 1-RG6, 2-CAT6.

For only 1 wire to trim, .5 hour may be heavy, but I rarely have only 1 wire to terminate. That said, from a bid standpoint, nothing takes less than a half hour in my mind because there will always be one or two locations in a house that go completely wrong and take a lot longer (eg. finding a jack that was covered by drywallers and cutting it out, returning on another day because the floor in the library is wet on trim day, belt sanding a decora cover to make it 1/16" thinner, etc.). Call it pessimistic but I'd rather err on the side of (my (economic)) safety, most especially if it is only a fraction of the overall job cost. Like Audiophiliac, we invoice T+M but provide an estimate for everything.

The OP said one drop with one wire. Most "TV jacks" we install are 1-RG6, 2-CAT6 and my math only changes to $299.90 (call it $300) as I would add $50 for the additional wire ($25 each 100 foot run of cat or rg) and $10 each for the 2 additional keystones.

Labor-economy-wise, I would still allocate .5 to trim (I know, I know: Why .5 for one or three wires? Simply put, I don't really want to get to the place where I feel I need to bill in .1 hour increments, like a lawyer, where a single wire is .3 and 3 wires are .7 (not .9, because labor economy/scaling). As a rule, I bid only in .5 hour increments, YMMV.

My business is the design/build of systems and installing TV or data jacks is certainly part of that, but I am not really in the "per-drop, prewire" or "prewire only" business, so I might be way off base with my pricing/bidding logic. I shared my costed out example above as a hard number to share with the community of how I price things and, perhaps, as an example of what to consider when pricing a "drop." Forgive me if that sounds a bit defensive, I mean none. I am here only to learn and share my experience (for good or ill).

OK, 4.15PM, beer time.