[AccessD] freelancing job sites (OT Reply)

> Lately, my 'salesman' has been taking my time/money quotes, and not
> adjusting them properly.  When I say 2 weeks, he should be telling his
> customer 4 weeks, instead, he tells them 1 week, and hounds me.

Sorry, I've got to "top" that one.
A couple of years ago I was hired to enhance a system that basically was a
custom-made CRM for a very specialized business.
There were no off-the-shelf packages, so their in-house developer wrote it
over a period of 3 years.
It was built using VB6, Access 97, and a bunch of 3rd party controls.
They lost the licenses and the developer, so I gave them the option of
building out additional functionality via Access 97.
It was to provide a new source of revenue for them. 6-8 weeks later it was
done.

Management then decided they wanted to rewrite the whole system....I gave
them a proposal in Access 2007 for $80,000 and 8 months time which they
rejected. Instead, they signed a development company to do it in dot-net/SQL
Server. I was disappointed, I thought I had given them a "bargain". Their
volume did not dictate a need for a heavy-duty database.

Two years and $250,000 later, the dot-net system is still nowhere near
completed.

Lesson: in IT freelancing, it's so easy to get burned.