billing ethics

[lyndsey -dot- amott -at- docsymmetry -dot- com]

I was recently asked to write a proposal for tightening up the text of 12 
subdomains for a company's website. Each subdomain was approximately 13 
pages. It took me a total of 18.5 hours to
- figure out the similarities and differences among the subdomains
- figure out how I would approach the job
- write the proposal 

I estimated that it would take me 75 hours to complete the job, and, because 
I really wanted to write for this company, I said that I would not charge 
for any hours over 75 (don't gasp--this is not the problem). 

The company accepted the proposal, but stated that they would not make a 
final decision until I had completed the text for one subdomain. I submitted 
a first draft as a .txt file and asked them to comment, but they refused, 
saying that they would prefer not to look at it until I had done all the 
HTML so that they could read the text in a browser. I did as they asked, but 
when they read the text in the browser, they felt that it was not punchy 
enough and decided to drop the project. They've asked me to send them an 
invoice for the work I did. 

I have two questions: First, have you ever had a client who refused to read 
a first draft? (I think that if they had read it, I would have been able to 
fix the punchiness problem and I'd still have a contract). 

Second, and this is the main question, should I bill for the 18.5 hours I 
spent on the proposal? Without the proposal, I can bill for only 28.5 hours, 
but with the proposal, the total hours would be 47, which might strike the 
company as rather unbelievable in light of the fact that I said I'd do all 
12 subdomains in 75 hours. Normally, I don't bill for the time it takes to 
write the proposal, but a proposal usually takes only a couple of hours to 
write and results in work that lasts for the hours estimated. I'm not sure 
how to proceed. Any ideas? Please reply to me personally or to "all" as I 
get the digestible version of this list. 

Thanks for your help.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lyndsey Amott
www.docsymmetry.com
Winnipeg, MB  R3G 2J3 


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