They don't need this to do a price quote ever period!
You may just wish not ever even speak to this company again. They are lying to you or inept.
If they can't tell wheter the site is written in ASP or PHP without loggin into to your web host they suck! Do not even think about hiring them!
Everything they need to know they can get by looking at the site in a web browser and by communicating with search engines.
I've dealt with one
SEO thatwas basiclly honest but the client wanted them to write content so he just gave them the password to the web host and you guessed it, they promptly "broke" the web site.
It's really much better if they just forward new content to your web developer and let him turn it into web pages.
DO NOT give them FTP access - nothing!
Yes there IS tons of damage they can do!
No they don't need to log in to your server to see title tags, alt tags, meta tags, headings etc. You can do that with any web browser by right clicking on the page and choosing "view source" even if it's dynamically generated.
It's very suspious they want this info.