We, at oDesk often receive complaints from service buyers and professionals providing the services for them, unhappy with the progress/results of their projects – and in most cases it all roots back to not having discussed the project properly.

I hope you don’t mind me including a link to your post in our community forum – it will be so useful for a lot of our professionals.

If you someone asked YOU to quote to build them a house what would you say? Do ALL houses cost the same? Or would you have questions about what type of house they want? Hey would an idea of their budget give you a better idea of what house you could offer?

Jesus half the time its do they REALLY want a house – we’ve built MANY sites were half way through it turns out they needed a 20 story office block not the bungalow they requested.

We only do option C (giving a rough ballpark to save timewasters/those with stupidly low budgets) – and I’ve learned the hard way those who are only interested in the lowest $$ aren’t worth working with.

Certainly not, but you’d never go into a mechanic and say “It’s making a funny noise, how much is that going to cost me to fix?” without getting a look under the hood. This is the consultation process.

I don’t tend to ask a client’s budget unless I really can’t get a read on their local market or technical savvy (some people understand the cost of a quality website, some don’t). We have solutions for almost any budget, and we need to know if we should offer custom code or prepackaged thingamabobs.

Actually when project is big there are a lot of options of how to get it done (for example, building from scratch or customizing some available script). So if someone wants to save money the best way is to say about it.
There is an old Ukrainian proverb: “Cheap fish makes bad soup”… I think that it’s better to pay more to developer you trust when you have a big project. It will definitely pay off.

I’m not opposed to meeting and talking about the project with a viable vendor. But I still fail to see how much I’m interested in spending has any effect on how much you’ll charge.

This is a good example. I agree with you, but only in situation when project is small. Just imagine a client who comes and ask to make him a great car. How should I do this not knowing what exactly he wants and what is his budget?