A client wanted an e-commerce store designed. We asked if she had a budget, and she said, “No; it costs what it costs.” My partner and I proposed a very reasonable price and in the proposal, we stated that additional hours would be billed at $60 per hour. She refused to even look at the proposal, handing it off to one of the interns to “deal with it.” The project wore on for about three months and we still hadn’t been paid for our initial invoice. We called the client and she assured us that her intern was handling it and that we would get a cheque in the mail. About a week later, we hadn’t heard from her. So we did what we usually do: halt work and send them a message. The client phoned me after receiving the message, basically screaming at me that it was too expensive. She said, “spend no more than 10 hours designing and programming it; I don’t want to spend more than $600.” We had spent 10 hours in meetings alone.