I don't provide quotes, but can provide an estimate. As we charge by the hour and for copy costs, it's impossible to know what the end fee will be.  But this is made clear to the inquirer.   So no fee for the estimate itself

 As to the second part of your question - this happens often.  My take is if they can't afford to pay me then I'm better off not doing work for them. If they want a shitty job they can find the inexperienced bargain basement abstractor to work for them.   If I get repeated requests from a specific company and no response/no work from previous replies -  I just delete the email.  It doesn't seem to stop them from continuing to send more email quote requests.