I suppose both, but I was referring to the latter.
I don't take the stance that a surveyor should be penalized for using previously obtained knowledge to produce a competitive quote. However, I trend towards Larry Phipps's theory of value based pricing. If the two lots are unrelated sequential conveyances it would be difficult to draw the fine line of how much "discount" you're actually giving the new client. Alternatively, if they are simultaneous conveyances and the neighbors discuss the cost of their respective surveys and the old client finds out that you charged the new client significantly less than he paid, he has a legitimate grievance.
Maybe unethical is too harsh a term. Poor practice seems to fit better as it would be impossible to assign a value to a surveyor's personal cadastre and its influence on pricing new projects.
I can certainly understand why some surveyors or clients would think poorly of me for charging the same price to survey identical abutting lots in a subdivision when the second survey takes a fraction of the time as the first.
When neighboring jobs come in, they are about the same price to survey.
The difference being the varying acreage, amount of brush to tend with and the amount of paperwork to research and created for each.
I give discounts for what the client can provide that I do not have to do or gather.
Tommy Young, post: 437293, member: 703 wrote: To be clear, do you mean charging the new client a discounted fee while you are under contract with the other client, or do you mean charging the new client a discounted fee using data collected for the former client?
The classic exam ethics question goes like this: You have quoted a client X dollars to survey his property. Surveying that property involves breaking out the whole block. An adjoiner to your client approaches you and offers you a few extra bucks (maybe 10% of $X) to throw in his corners while you are at it, which you could do profitably.
Accepting that offer would be unethical. The ethical thing to do is to split the cost evenly between the original client and his neighbor. If that means charging them both the full $X or if it means doing the combined job for 1.1X and charging them each 0.55X is, I think, between you and your maker.
More questionable is what happens when the neighbor calls you up 6 month later and asks you to put in his remaining corners.
In this case the OP has worked for the neighbor, but not on this property. So it has nothing to do with splitting costs.