Detecting difficult clients early and not accepting them has been an absolute bliss for my side business.
Some of the most difficult clients are the richest or could be just freeloaders.
Some require exceptional service and immediate response times and are willing to pay for it.
Some want to use their behavior to pay less and blame it on you. It's very hard to filter out between those two.
> Do you want the "difficult client" to walk around to other prospects, warning them about how you tried to scam them with an outrageous price?
It's not a scam. Freelance contracts specify an agreement between me and a client. I can charge whatever I like and they can say no—everything is transparent. I'm not obligated to charge the industry average. In fact, I also vary my price depending on the client: a big tech company gets a bigger bill than a small local business, for example.
> are you hoping that they might accept your outrageous price
No. I just don't want to work with them. Also, it's not unusual for attractive clients to back out because they don't want to pay my normal rates—they're on the high end for the industries I work with. But that's not a scam either; I charge what the market will bear and I have no shortage of work (just the opposite).
There are ways of turning down projects without being insulting, and without offering outrageously high quotes. For example, you can say "I'm spread out too thin with all my other projects right now, sorry".
> It's not a scam. Freelance contracts specify an agreement between me and a client. I can charge whatever I like and they can say no—everything is transparent. I'm not obligated to charge the industry average.
This is your opinion, not the opinion of the "difficult client" that you're presenting the quote to. If you offered me a quote that is outrageously expensive, I will assume you are trying to scam me, and I will tell other people that you tried to scam me. Now, my question to you is, is it a desirable outcome for you to have a "difficult client" going around telling everybody that you're trying to scam people? Yes, you have your opinion that you didn't try to scam them, but they'll be going around telling people you tried to scam them nonetheless. To me it seems like this outcome should be avoided when possible.
> Also, it's not unusual for attractive clients to back out because they don't want to pay my normal rates—they're on the high end for the industries I work with. But that's not a scam either; I charge what the market will bear and I have no shortage of work (just the opposite).
Offering a rate that you believe the market will pay is distinctly different from offering an outrageously high rate that you believe the market will not pay.
I’m sure some of these people do react this way. They are, after all, assholes. That’s why I didn’t want to work with them in the first place. I can’t deny that it’s a possibility, but it doesn’t seem to have have resulted in any reputation issues.
I'm not a lawyer, but there are documented court cases in Finland where "two entities entered a contractual agreement over an agreed price", and then later the court determined that the price was outrageous and therefore it was actually fraud. For example, a door-to-door salesman selling house renovations to elderly people for 10x prices. Now, perhaps this is not fraud in the jurisdiction where you live, but it is definitely fraud in Finland.
> selling house renovations to elderly people for 10x prices
is illegal if the targets were elderly (or disabled), but not if you are just regular Joe and definitively not to business. In fact that's how politicians usually "help" their friends here, so laws are quite muddy probably on purpose
You literally can set arbitrary price to your time and at worst there won't be anyone willing to pay it.
This checks as long you give your rate/price upfront. This would be a scam if you DO the work and THEN charge non-market rate/price.
If you go for a quote for a simple android app (iPhone is not that popular here) you are quite likely to get more than 10x difference in quotes from various studios.
So there's logic in it. Money does balance the difficult clients too. Since they require more work too handle.
Yeah, I don't get this either. Isn't putting together a proposal with a fake high price for someone you don't want to work really awkward and a waste of time for everyone? It's like a power-trip meme in freelancer forums.
"I don't think I'm a good fit for this project" is fine. Even when there's nothing wrong with the client, variations of this answer are fine when you're too busy, the deadline is too tight, they're using unfamiliar tech, it sounds risky, they want you to work in a way you don't want to work etc.
It doesn't mean the price is fake. If your client is difficult, you know you'll have more phone calls, spend more time on interacting with them than with the code, would need to give them more support, haggle on the requirements and changer requests. All that cost time. And since I don't like to do those things, my rate for "having a call with the client" is higher than my rate for "developing the feature". Of course, clients doesn't need to know my internal pricing, so he would either get my "x2-3 normal hourly rate" or "xX normal project price" depending on the type of project.
It's very sensible and normal to quote more if you expect higher admin time and other complications that carry risk e.g. many stakeholders to get agreement from.
Given enough money, I would be thrilled to work for the worst client I can imagine. There are very few cases where I would flat out refuse to work with a client, regardless of money. And in those cases, I would be scared to death to just say: “sorry, I feel it would be better not to work for you, although you want it”.