customer uses proposal as spec

One of the joys of working as a contractor is quoting for projects that possibly become a real project some when. The joys of a contractor quoting to a larger company (at least by New Zealand standards) is that the decision trees are so arbitrary and long that it might take ages to get one of those projects. In the meantime you hang in limbo - not too sure if you should take on another project or not as that bigger one could still come. I got used to that as those bigger projects always take way longer as initially planned and by the time they are ripe the project you take on in the meantime is done easily.

This time round it was different. I made a nice document lining out all sorts of technical things I would suggest to implement and after knowing that company for a while already I had a pretty clear idea of what they really needed and were not able to achieve on their own for the past years.

The doc passed the initial meetings and all looked like this time I would actually get a project without the need for an interim project only to learn today that my proposal was refused and instead used as a spec for the internal teams to implement. Never mind that I think they are utterly incapable of doing so I am quite irritated that they not even considered paying anything for the work I put into the proposal that is more like a programming howto for a key part of their new infrastructure now.

Would I still live in Germany I would now call my lawyer - instead I polished my website and decided to not work for that client anymore, guess it is healthier and less stressful in the end.