What term describes the practice of a contractor approaching subcontractors who have not bid on a job to ask for a lower bid?

The practice described is known as bid shopping. This term refers to the situation where a contractor solicits subcontractors who have not submitted a bid for a project in order to obtain a lower bid from them. The contractor might want to lower project costs or secure a better deal by leveraging the information from existing bids or trying to encourage subcontractors to lower their prices.

Bid shopping can create tension between contractors and subcontractors, as it may be perceived as an unfair practice. Subcontractors invest time and resources into preparing their bids, and when a contractor seeks to negotiate lower prices after bids have already been submitted, it undermines the competitive bidding process. When looking at the other options, they either refer to general practices of comparing quotes or negotiating, or they do not specifically address the act of soliciting lower bids after initial offers have been made. Thus, bid shopping is the accurate term capturing that specific behavior.